The Four Horsemen Ride Again
by James Malone
Summary: After almost a decade, four of the wasteland's most legendary gunfighters reunite against a threat more sinister than they have ever faced.
1. Chapter 1

THE FOUR HORSEMEN RIDE AGAIN Chapter 1: Stalker

**Walking the Big Dog – Stalker – Reticence Mode – Strange Material – Nothing Goes According to Plan – The New Models – Situation Normal: All Fucked Up – Trading Places with the Beast – A Dish Best Served Cold – Defective, Defected – Taking Stock – In the Land of the Blind – Spare Parts – Tastes like Chicken – What Is Poison – Dinner is Served – Freedom Fried**

On a cold October evening a box with legs walked across the wasteland. A large rectangular box about the size of a roll-off dumpster built of wicked looking structural steel. It _walked_—needed no wheels, no treads, no truck to carry it. Four legs carried it over the rocky terrain and down a steep hillside—huge robotic, hydraulic legs, bent in roughly the shape of a dog's, each as long and thick as a man stood tall. The crate moved silently despite its size and weight. Several figures walked alongside it, shrouded in black.

DI-246 watched them from a distant hillside through the ocular of a powerful telescope mounted to a very powerful rifle. He lay prone in the dust, steadily moving his crosshairs along with their movement. He counted five. Three of them wore metallic armor, glossy in a way but at the same time seeming to absorb and negate rather than reflect the light of the stars and moon. They looked like dense black shadows against the backdrop of midnight—shadows cast by themselves. They carried weapons. Two others wore only black cloth uniforms and caps indicative of an officer's rank and carried no weapons.

When they'd moved far enough, Dutch hefted the rifle, folding its bipod, and hurried along a course parallel to theirs. When he found another decent vantage point he lowered himself again to the ground and unfolded the bipod and aimed the rifle.

They had stopped. As he watched, the dog-like legs bent down and the container sank slowly to the ground until its legs had folded entirely into its sides. The three armed guards formed a semicircle around the front of the container while the two officers walked around to either side of it. The one on Dutch's side of the container opened a pair of cabinet doors to reveal a glowing computer monitor and an array of blinking lights and esoteric switches and buttons. Dutch couldn't see the one around the opposite side of the container—he expected something similar. The officer started pushing buttons, and a metal pole like an antenna rose over the top of the container and began to rotate.

The earpiece in Dutch's headset beeped a warning. He took his hand from under the front of the rifle and turned his forearm to show the display of his wrist-mounted computer. The small screen displayed a warning—_unauthorized scan detected_. Bits of data flashed by. _Entering reticence mode. Depowering._ The screen went dark, and Dutch's senses, sight and sound, seemed to dull as his night vision and heightened hearing dimmed and all the world became as dark and as quiet as men were meant to see it. The scope was a good one, at 32-power magnification with a 56mm objective, but on a cloudy night he could see little, least of all his crosshairs. After a while the antenna ceased spinning and lowered back into the container. Light returned to the world, and he could hear again. His reticule also began to glow red.

One of the officers flipped a switch and a set of thick steel doors slowly opened outward on one end of the container. All of the figures entered through the doors and they closed behind them. For a long while, nothing moved. Dutch took slow breaths. His thumb snicked off the rifle's safety. Its magazine contained four heavy .50-caliber rounds—explosive, armor piercing, intended for disabling heavy machinery. Not quite enough gun to breach the container's armor, he wagered.

And then, movement. Dutch moved the reticule to the other side of the container. Another set of heavy mechanical doors opened slowly. He took a long breath and held it. His finger snaked around the trigger and began to subtract from its four pounds of resistance.

At first, it emerged only briefly, and only its nose, a flicking tongue. Testing the air. That vanished back inside and more than a minute passed. Then a hulking shape emerged all at once—an easy eight feet tall even hunched, a quarter ton or more of scaly, bulging flesh. Even at several hundred meters he could make out the size of its teeth, horns, and claws. It looked left, and looked right, took another cautious sniff of the air, and began to walk forward.

He fired.

The scope picture rose with the surge of recoil. An immense flame emerged from the barrel, split four ways to the sides by the muzzle brake, the concussion lifting a haze of dry earth from the ground in front of him. He brought his reticule down just in time to see the beast slump limply to the ground in a bloody heap, bits of bone and scaly flesh still raining down around it. His hand flew to the bolt, heavy metal turning, unlocking as he pulled. A smoking shell the size of a salt shaker landing in the dirt beside him. He closed the bolt and it locked shut with a great authority. His hand went back to the trigger.

He waited. He might have worried his immense muzzle flash had given away his position, if the soldiers hadn't been cowering inside their box. The container's heavy doors tried to close but closed only around the corpse's midsection and jammed. Everything that happened next came sudden and very fast.

His headset beeped another warning, and his vision began to dim. "No," he said. "Fuck you." He swung his crosshairs around at the emerging antenna and he fired. The explosive round sent sparks in all directions off the top of the container and a hundred pieces of the antenna went spinning off into the night. His vision continued to dim and his reticule lost its glow. He swore again and punched the cancel button on his wrist repeatedly. He fumbled with the bolt, shucked in another round. His vision returned only in time to see the second monster explode through the open door just as they nearly squeezed shut. It shot across the ground as a blur. He tried to fire after it, saw the geyser of dirt sent up just beside his target. By the time he'd loaded another round, it was gone.

"Damn it," he said. Another warning blip came over his headset. His eyes went to his wrist. _Detection Warning. Detection Warning_. By the time he found the second antenna it was no longer worth the bullet.

A hatch opened over the personnel's section of the container and a gatling gun on a spinning turret rose and immediately began to fire. At the same time the legs emerged from under the container and it rose and turned and lumbered toward him at a gallop. He fired once to disable the turret and didn't wait to see if he would hit it. He grabbed the gun and rolled. A hundred rounds had already filled the air and came down splashing up nasty puffs of dirt all around him. He rolled just in time behind the cover of a boulder and the little explosions chewed up the world around him.

They stopped as quickly as they started. He worked the bolt and raised the rifle and swung it up over the top of the boulder. He'd hit the turret. It still fired, but swung crazily in a circle shooting out as many sparks as bullets. It made a full rotation, came around again, and he ducked just as another wave of bullets tore into his cover. He rose and fired again and blew it apart.

The great machine lumbered toward him. He wrenched open the bolt, pulled a solitary round from a bandolier over his chest, and fed it straight into the chamber by hand and closed it. He took aim at the thing's front left leg and fired. It sent out a shower of sparks and the machine staggered in a way eerily akin to a wounded creature. He loaded another round and fired again. The leg snapped in the middle, spraying hydraulic fluid like arterial blood, and the front left corner of the machine crashed to the dirt. The doors at the back of the container, at the personnel end, opened rapidly. He hurried to load another single round. When he looked again he could see two of the guards running across the remaining ground toward him. At least, he could see a spectral outline of them, a pink and blue haze generated by his night vision. To the naked eye, they would not appear at all.

They thought he couldn't see them. He proved them wrong. He aimed and fired and the antimaterial round, more than overkill against a human target at close range, ripped the poor man completely in half at the waist. The man beside him dove behind the cover of a ridge. Then Dutch's headset beeped another warning, and he looked just in time to see the flash, and the telltale streak of fire across the sky, washing out his night vision and growing rapidly. He dove for cover, abandoning even his boulder, and leapt down the steep and rocky hillside behind him.

The explosion shattered the boulder behind him and seemed to push him farther through the air than he'd intended. He landed on his back to protect his rifle and the impact drove all the air from his lungs. He fell, skidding over coarse rock. Caught himself, spun around, left the rifle in the dirt and rose bringing up the compact submachine-gun that hung at his side. The stock was folded, the sling tangled. He scarcely had time to hit the safety and find his sight picture before the second guard emerged over the top of the hill just above him. _God damn, the new models can move fast._

The guard leveled a pulse rifle at him. Dutch triggered of a burst of plain lead at him, the bullets thumping sparks out of the inner wiring of his stealth armor. The guard's aim was knocked away and when he fired his bolt of hot plasma shot toward outer space and probably made it there. Dutch fired another burst, and another, hammering into the guard. The shimmering haze fell away as the guard's stealth field flickered out. Dutch had no time to look at him. The guard leapt through the air and came down right on top of Dutch and they both fell again rolling and tumbling backward down the hill.

Before they even stopped the guard pulled a handgun. Dutch pulled his as well. Both identical models. The guard grabbed Dutch's gun hand by the wrist and tried to wrench it away. Dutch grabbed the front of the guard's pistol and managed to squeeze the slide out of battery. The guard, stronger than Dutch, shoved the pistol right into Dutch's ribs, but when he tried to fire nothing happened. When Dutch fired, the bullet caught the guard in the side of the neck and a gusher of blood fountained out. The guard released Dutch to grip his wound. Dutch hit him across the head with the pistol and rolled on top of him and pushed his head into the dirt with the muzzle of his pistol and fired until the guard stopped twitching

The blood was wet on Dutch's face, and he could taste it. He staggered to his feet, battered all over. He spat and wiped a sleeve across his mouth and chin. He couldn't see from one of his eyes. Blood in it. No, worse than that. Cracked. Stupid. Stupid. Everything refracted. He reached up and turned it until it powered off. Dust in his other eye. He'd taken off the covers to look through the rifle. Stupid.

He holstered the pistol and reloaded the submachine-gun and unfolded the stock. Where was the other guard? One got the drop of him so quickly. The other should have…

An inhuman roar came from across the wastes. A human scream came after, followed by another, and another, and then one louder and more anguished that ended before it could finish. Dutch's next thought was to run back to his rifle. He found it, loaded another round. He raised it to his shoulder but couldn't see through the scope. Wrong eye. He switched to his weak hand and tried again. Still could barely see. He wiped off his remaining eye with a shirt sleeve. Wasn't supposed to do that—smudges, scratches. He went to the top of the hill and looked down.

No sign of the third guard. No time to think. He ran toward the lopsided container. The doors on the personnel side were still open. He ran around the side of the container. The rear end angled upward, he would have to climb. He slung the heavy rifle as he ran under the upturned end of the container. He raised his submachine-gun, prepared to deal with the two unarmed officers inside.

As he turned to look up into the open end of the container, something fell out at his feet. It took him a moment, but he quickly determined it to be a human head. When he looked up, the second deathclaw crouched in the opening of the container and looked down at him with a mouthful of dripping human viscera.

Dutch ran back under the container. The deathclaw hopped down, roared, and pursued him. He fumbled to unsling the rifle—whirled around. The deathclaw stood right over him. He fired the huge rifle from the hip. Winged it in the shoulder, while the explosive round impacted the side of the container and blew fire and bits of metal back into the beast's face. The deathclaw screamed and tore at its face. Dutch dropped the rifle and ran to the other end of the container. It was still open, jammed around a crushed heap of a younger deathclaw's remains. Open just enough for Dutch to barely squeeze through. He did, and just in time. The deathclaw fit a head and arm through the crack, a gnarled hand with ten inch bloody claws swinging wildly for him. The claws passed within a hair's width of Dutch's face.

He drew his pistol and fired once, twice, into the beast's face. A 10mm round—practically a toy against a deathclaw. It screamed once at him and pulled back. When it pulled out, it shook the remains of the other deathclaw free and the doors finally slid shut, leaving him in perfect darkness.

He leaned against the wall, breathing, breathing. Then, when he thought himself alone, a voice. A woman's voice.

"Who is there? 341, is that you? Hello? Who is there?"

Dutch's night vision adjusted just fast enough for him to make out the figure of a young woman dressed in an officer's uniform before she raised a pistol and started firing. In the darkness, most of her shots missed. One hit him in the side, thankfully armored—nevertheless painful. Before she could fire again, and hit her in the jaw with the butt of his own pistol and knocked her out cold.

The sun had risen by the time Dutch had managed to get the doors open again—or, more aptly, to craft a shaped charge that could blow apart locking mechanisms designed to keep in deathclaws without also blowing up himself. When the door crashed to the ground and sunlight streamed in he emerged through the haze of smoke coughing and swearing as the sunlight burnt out his night vision. He carried his prisoner, also coughing, over one shoulder—her hands and feet tied behind her. He set her down on the ground in the shade of the container and pulled the foam plugs from his ears and waited for his remaining eye to adjust to daylight.

A couple of giant roaches picked at a piece of human remains near the other end of the container. He shot one with his pistol and the other scurried off into the brush. A headless torso with ribcage stripped nearly bare. The tattered remains of an officer's uniform, just like his prisoner wore. He found his rifle where he'd dropped it. Picked it up, checked it, loaded it, and slung it over his shoulder. Heavy god damn thing—still, a comfort with one their deathclaws still at large.

His prisoner gazed at the remains with a look of sorrow on her face. "Friend of yours?" Dutch said.

She gave him one of the most hate filled looks he'd ever received.

"Your own doing," he said. "This is the dish you've been serving. You think this one tasted any different?" He chuckled. "Because the deathclaw certainly didn't."

"I know who you are," she said. He realized this was the first she'd actually seen him in the light. He gave her a good look.

"Oh?"

"You're the defective."

"The what?"

"The defective one."

"Defective, or defected?"

"Both," she said. "The one who left and returned and left again. We knew you'd be back again. Trying to get us to accept you back."

Dutch laughed. "Oh, is that what this was?"

"Who knows what you thought your goal was—how your brain works. You're defective—in your design, or your programming. We'll determine which after we dismantle you, and make sure it never happens again."

He grabbed her by the hair and forced her to face him. "You don't program a person. You don't design a person." The look in her eyes told him his words were wasted breath. He let her fall to the ground.

He headed back up the hillside. He retrieved each of his spent shells that he could find, for later reloading. From there he could see a pair of large scorpions picking and fighting over the remains of the guard he'd fought. He didn't want to get too close, and he remembered looking into the man's natural eyes as he'd killed him. He went to the dead tree where he'd hung his heavy pack and found, without too much surprise, that some scavenger had ripped open and emptied the pocket filled with his consumables. He hefted the rest and headed back down.

He saw no sign of the third guard. The deathclaw perhaps had carried it away. Roaches were gathered around both halves of the guard he'd blown apart. He shot two of them and the rest dispersed. He kicked the upper half of the torso over with his boot and a pair of glass-front mechanical eyes looked up glinting in the sun on a face otherwise stripped of flesh—down to white bone interlaced with bits of circuitry and metal wiring. He took that half of the torso by its hand and dragged it back to the container.

His prisoner was doing her best to push herself away from the container and toward what he noticed to be a pistol half buried nearby. She was nearly on it—he grabbed her by her ankles and dragged her back to the container and untied and retied her hands around one of the container's mechanical legs. He went back around and set down his gear and leapt up and climbed into the personnel compartment of the container. Blood covered everything, and much of the equipment had been thrashed to pieces by the deathclaw's rampage. In a cabinet he found some MREs, medical supplies, and a water dispenser. He dispensed some water onto his hands. Cooler and clearer than any he'd seen in months. He resisted the urge to drink and rubbed handfuls onto his face and hair to wash himself. He satisfied his thirst with a swig of the rusty-tasting natural water from the rubber bladder on his back—fed to him through the end of a hose fastened to his collar. He threw everything else not fastened down to the ground below and hopped back down.

He went into a medical kit and found bandages, antiseptics, forceps, sutures, screwdrivers, hex keys, and a soldering iron. He went to the dead guard and with a screwdriver unscrewed the bolts around the man's eyes and carefully pried them out. The eye assemblies resembled small video cameras. He looked over them for flaws and chose the one in the best condition. Both appeared to be far from new—the guard, more than likely, had not been their original owner either.

He went into his pocket and found a woman's powder compact and unfolded it and set it beside the corpse so that he could see himself in the mirror. He inspected the cracks in his eye. It had to go. He went into his pip-boy and made sure power to the eye was disabled. A prompt asked him if he meant to disable both eyes. He pressed no. Another warned him of the dangers of operating on one eye without power to both disabled. Self operation on eye circuitry was _strongly_ discouraged. Proceed, cancel?

He looked at his prisoner. "I don't suppose you'd like to assist me?"

She didn't respond. He pushed proceed.

He took the screwdriver and undid the four small screws around his left eye and turned the locking mechanism and the ocular and retinal assemblies bulged forward and he felt that dizzying sensation of negative pressure, that pulling sensation, against his frontal lobe. He nearly vomited.

When his senses returned he slowly, carefully drew the eye assembly forward until the wiring was exposed and then he carefully detached each with the forceps. The ocular cavity went all the way back to his brain. He tried not to look down it while he took up the dead guard's replacement and reattached each wire before shoving it back in and fixing it back into place. He went into his pip-boy and reactivated power to the eye and his vision came back as poor as he'd expected. Double-vision, depth perception critically off. He went into advanced mode and tried to fine tune the settings. Fifteen minutes later his vision was still not perfect but close enough. He put everything away into his pack, stood, and went to his prisoner.

"How long you suppose it will take for another team to come check on this one? More than a day, I would guess. We'll be far from here by then."

He pulled her to her feet and untied her hands and forced her to wear his backpack and then tied her hands again in front. Then he untied her legs. "Walk," he said. "I'll be behind you." He pushed her forward.

She stopped and turned. "Where are we going?" she said.

"Hunting," he said. "From there…we'll see."He pushed her onward.

He killed a large lizard with a silenced shot from his SMG as evening neared. He prepared a campfire and then skinned and gutted it and skewered it on a spit and let it begin cooking. His prisoner sat regarding the bleeding meat with a glum look.

"Look familiar?" he said.

That made her angry.

"Looks familiar to me. I don't mean gecko meat."

"Go to hell."

"You rarely see deathclaws. And that's Including the one that kills you. It stalks you. Smells you. Feels you—the vibrations you let off when you walk. Doesn't need a line of sight with you. Then you look away, and it knows you did, and if you ever look back it's too late."

He took one from his pack—the titular claw, nearly a foot long and sharp as a blade. He dragged it across his abdomen. "One of these swipes the air, and you, so fast and so quiet you don't know it happened until you see your intestines around your feet."

She said nothing.

"They're surgeons, deathclaws. They know how to hit your spine, just right, so you're left as just a head attached to the meat it's after. Then it drags that meat back to its lair, where its young ones can eat it slowly. And that head of yours can just watch, and wait."

She said nothing.

"Thing is, as dangerous as they are… You aren't what it's looking for. You're too much trouble. It would rather just have a rat, or a dog, or a cow. But lately. Lately people talk of deathclaws that eat nothing but you, and me, and your friend. That they'll do all they can to break into a family's home, and drag them all away…men, women, children…babies. The chilling thing is…deathclaws are so good at what they do, some hypothesize that if they had a mind to, they could all but wipe man off of what's left of this cinder of a planet. And some people think this is a sign they finally do."

Dutch cut a sliver of meat off and chewed on it. Sticky, flaky, oddly sweet. He cut another sliver off and threw it to her. She brushed it off her lap into the dirt.

"Eat," he said.

"No."

"It's not poison," he said.

She looked at him.

"That's what they tell you, right? Don't eat anything from outside. Don't drink any but the water we give you. You'll be poisoned. You'll bring the poison back with you. You'll become poison."

She nodded. "You will."

"Well I've been eating this for years. That must make me poison."

"You are."

Dutch nodded. "Maybe true. What else do you call something small, hidden, undetectable. That infiltrates something larger and better and attacks it from hiding, anonymously, with the sole purpose of killing, exterminating, until nothing is left. And then it fades away itself, pointlessly, because it has no better goal, no other purpose."

"Yes, what else?"

He cut off another piece of meat and ate it whole. He guzzled natural water through the hose to his pack. He went into his bags and found one of their MREs and one of their steel canteens of water and threw them both across the fire into her lap.

"Eat your own, then. Everyone eats, tonight."

At sundown he led her to a lone tree, long dead and partially petrified, barren of branches and polished nearly smooth. He tested its strength and it held firm. He looked around. Aside from a few distant hillsides, flat ground stretched on in all directions. Easy to see for miles.

"This will do," he said.

She looked around, confused, trying to see whatever he did.

He untied her hands and retied them behind her back and around the trunk of the tree. "What are you doing?" she said.

"Not me. You," he said. "And you are doing what you came here to do. Feeding your pet."

She fought him, but too late. He roped her hands and elbows firmly in place. "You're not serious," she said.

"She's angry, and hungry, and she's following us. As soon as it's dark, she'll strike. I intend to be far away when she does."

"This won't work. You don't scare me."

"I shouldn't. I'm the least of your worries."

Her voice trembled. "Is this is your plan? You think this will make me talk?"

Dutch finished one last knot. "I would you prefer you didn't."

"You're not serious."

"We've been over that." Dutch picked up his back and turned to go.

"Wait," she called.

"That's your job."

"Don't leave me here."

He kept walking.

She put up as much of a struggle as she could. Good. A deathclaw loved a struggle—could smell a struggle a mile off. By the third hour of waiting he began to sense, without quite seeing or hearing, the presence of something. The night became especially quiet. Dutch lay quietly as he could from his vantage nearly a mile away and watched through the scope for movement. It would come sudden. He'd get one chance.

He weighed the pros against the cons of letting the deathclaw eat her. She deserved it—they all did. She'd be a burden. To bring her any farther would require him to sacrifice one of his most valuable tools. He could think of few cons.

Still, when he saw the surge of motion, and heard the girl's screams even at so far a distance, his finger went to the trigger and he fired. In the time it took the bullet to reach them the deathclaw cleared the distance and loomed over her and raised one clawed hand to bring it down and… The bullet tore its arm clean off at the shoulder. Blood gushed as though from a pressurized hose. The beast let out a horrific roar and tried to flee. He fired again—it stumbled. He fired again right as it disappeared over the ridge and it vanished out of sight.

He swore. Not because he expected it to live. Not because he'd wasted two shots. Because he hadn't meant for it to suffer.

He walked the grueling long way back to his prisoner. She hung limp around the tree, breathing heavily. The deathclaw's blood covered her head to foot. He walked past her, following the blood trail. He eventually came upon the beast lying on its side in a pool of blood. It still breathed—labored, with each breath ejecting blood from its nose and mouth. It turned one yellow eye toward him as he approached. It didn't rise.

One last shot ended its misery and some of his own. He went back to his prisoner and stopped thirty yards before her. She looked at him coldly. The fight had left her. From his belt he took one of several grenades and pulled the pin to prime it and threw it. It landed very near her feet. She looked at it and then at him. He took several steps back.

"What are you—"

Instead of an explosion, the grenade emitted a sharp crack and an arc of blue electrical current. The effect was almost undetectable. The prisoner screamed and shook violently in her bonds and her face contorted with pain for a moment. Then she went limp again.

Dutch went to her and drew a knife and cut the ropes holding her to the tree. She collapsed to the dirt. He sheathed the knife and knelt down beside her.

"Are you conscious?" he asked.

She stirred. Her hands went to her head and held it as if it contained a great pain. "What…did you do?"

"I hit you with an EMP grenade. I should have saved that. Could have made a battle with a very dangerous enemy very easy. You should be grateful."

"What have you…why…"

"You don't have any signs of them on the outside like me, but I know you have some cybernetics in you. We all did, whether we knew it or not. Did you know? Doesn't matter. They're all fried now."

"My head. Burning."

"Probably one in the back of your skull. Recording your thoughts, perhaps. Implanting others? You're free now."

She rose swinging. He blocked one hit. Another caught him in the jaw. It hurt. She knocked him over and leapt on him screaming and clawing and punching. He flung her off, pinned her, put his pistol to her forehead. Cocked it.

"I guess you did know. Then you were counting on the tracking devices they gave us also—to bring help. Well too bad. That's gone now. As I said, be grateful. The alternative was that I cut it out of you, shoot it out of you, or let that thing eat it out of you."

He stood, hauled her up. His face against hers.

"Now we're both defective. Someday, maybe you'll recognize it as a gift. I am taking a lot of risks to give it to you. Make me regret it, and I will make you regret it."

"I'm not going with you."

"Yes, you are."

She kneed him hard in the ribs. His armor absorbed most of it, but she got him in the same bruised spot where she'd shot him before and he doubled over. She broke free and ran. He aimed his pistol at her back. He fired a shot into the air. She still ran. He sighed, set down his heavy rifle, and gave chase.

He caught up with her after a hundred yards and tackled her. She hit him. He hit her back. He tied her feet and hands and hefted her over his shoulder. Then he went to retrieve his rifle.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Seven Men from Now

**Cattle Raiders – Fresh Sausage – Enter, Hatchett – No Blood on my Hands – Branded to Kill – A Shot from the Dark – See No Evil, Hear No Evil – Going By the Book – A Man of Few Words – He Who is Without Sin – Polite Words with a Lynch Mob – The Legend of Sheriff John Hatchett**

Seven filthy men sat in a circle around a campfire that glowed red with hot coals while one man turned a slab of beef on a spit. An immature calf lay gutted nearby, the gut pile and congealing blood steaming in the cold air. The seven men wore crude and tattered clothing and makeshift armor stitched from bits of leather and scrap metal. Their weapons—rifles, blades, and spears—lay strewn about the ground. A scattering of tall stone formations, the ruins of some ancient prewar structure, partially sheltered them from the night. Beyond the stones a cluster of Brahmin pawed and sniffed at the barren ground and brayed for the food and water they had been denied for far too long.

"Is it done yet?" the leader of the men said. His name was Langy Harton. He had hair wild and tall on top but shaved close at the sides and tiny eyes.

"Just a bit longer, I reckon," said the one turning the spit.

"Well hurry it up. Fucking starving, surrounded by more good food than I ever seen."

"There's still plenty hardtack left," said a man sitting off from the rest.

A rock was thrown. The speaker ducked.

"Like hell I'd eat that shit, sitting on near a million pounds of steak."

"Weren't supposed to eat none of them. Kango is gonna count the heads. Gonna know you killed that one."

"Kango don't have to know shit. Damn thing died of natural causes, far as he knows."

"Won't care that it died. He'll care you lot ate it when he said not."

"Mother fucker, if you want to eat that nasty shit all night, be my guest."

"I mean to."

"Well, good. You can watch us eat. Fucking coward. We ain't afraid of Kango. We'll eat like men. You can eat like…god damn rat or something. Yeah, we ain't afraid of Kango, right boys?"

The boys looked at each other.

Langy grabbed the one nearest to him. "Right?"

"Yessir. Right."

Langy jumped to his feet and kicked and stomped the man. "Wrong, you dumb idiot! Kango is the meanest bastard in this world, and you better be afraid of him!" He jabbed a thumb into his own chest. "But I'm his cousin, see. And I'm badder than hell myself. So you can eat without fear, because I say you can, understand?"

He looked at the loner sitting off. "Sides. Who says Kango even needs to know?"

"Nobody says, but I expect he will. Don't know how, but he will. He figured out harder puzzles than any of our faces."

"You saying you're gonna tell on us, is that it?"

"No more than you'll be telling on yourselves. He'll smell it on your breath, sure enough."

Langy's face turned red and he fumed for a moment but then he smiled. "Tell you what he'll smell on _your_ breath—same damn thing, and stronger than any of us. Shem, cut me off a bit of that….No, hell with that."

Langy cackled to himself and ran to the calf carcass and grabbed up a handful of viscera. "Whoo-eee fellas. What do you figure? Sounds like we got us a blabber mouth. Bet that blabber mouth would like to be stuffed with a little fresh sausage, huh, huh?"

The blabber mouth jumped to his feet. "What in the hell is the matter with—"

Langy yelled "Get him boys!" and the rest of the raiders sprang up and rushed the man and punched and kicked and held him down while Langy ran up with a handful of bleeding guts and starting forcing them down the poor man's face. "Hah hah. You like that? Such a good loyal trooper, ain't you. Saved the best part for the best soldier."

When they finally let him go, the man rolled over and vomited cow blood and cow shit and bits of cow guts and Langy kicked him in the ribs and left him gagging and choking on it. The men all laughed and turned to go back to the fire. Their laughter caught in their throats and they froze where they stood.

In the flickering light of the fire, a man in black stood waiting for them, casting a shadow as tall as a giant against the ruins behind him. He wore a wide-brimmed hat low, the brim just above his eyes, and a weathered hide duster. A copper star-shaped badge over his breast said "Sheriff" in bold letters. Rows of thumb-sized .44 Magnum cartridges gleamed along his gun belt and the polished white bone handles of his matching revolvers glowed pale in the firelight. The handles rode high and unfastened and canted forward as though itching to leap into his hands. He used the glowing red end of a piece of wood from the fire to light the end of a cigar and tossed it back in.

"Evening gentlemen."

They stared at him stiff as boards and just as quiet. He puffed at the cigar. "Couldn't help but notice your fire. Smells like a great meal, a mile off."

Finally, one of them leaned in to Langy and whispered, "That's the sheriff, man. That's Hatchett."

"I know damn well who that is, you idiot." Langy tried to make himself look taller, and put on a smile missing several teeth. "What brings you around these parts, Sheriff? Long way from Yewtown, ain't we?"

There were a couple of rifles on the ground along with some lesser weapons. Langy inched toward one as he spoke. Hatchett gave no indication that he noticed or cared.

"That we are. But if you want to know, I'm out leading a posse. Hunting some banditos attacked a cattle ranch not too far from my town. Cattle ranch that belonged to an honest man, Jake Mailer, good friend of many in Slickrock."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. And I hope for his and all his friend's sakes he's all—"

"Oh, he's dead. And his two boys. And his wife."

Langy held out his hands. They oozed calf blood. He looked at them and wiped his hands on his shirt, smearing it with blood, and tried again. "Well now, Sheriff. Words about you are strong, and sometimes those words are frightening ones, but the ones I believe call you a man with the goodness of mind and heart to hear a whole story, and everyone's side of it, before jumping to judgments."

Hatchett brim came up a fraction of an inch. His eyes said he was listening.

"And I know we've had our run ins before, you and me and some I walk with. I can tell you plain, however—if you're suspecting _us_ of this foul deed, I can promise you…"

"Noticed your herd out there. It's a nice one. Sounds like they could use some watering."

"Now those cows were bought from a lawful rancher named Marl not too far from here at all, and I happen to have a bill of sale to prove just that."

"I heard of Marl's operation. Let's see that bill."

Langy looked at his confederates and back at Hatchett. He pulled a bit of paper from a pocket in his armor and stepped forward and handed it over and then snapped back as if afraid of being bitten.

Hatchett held up a pair of spectacles without putting them on and looked through them at the paper, smudged with bloody fingerprints. As he read he said, "Smells like your roast is burning there, Langy. Best see to it."

The underside of the side of beef had charred black as coal. Langy gestured and his chef went to turn it with one hand. His other hand, on the ground, inched toward an assault rifle. Every man waited in silenced while Hatchett read, but for the dissident on the ground, still spitting out bits of something foul.

Hatchett handed Langy back the paper. "Looks to be in order, sure enough. Quite a purchase, Langy. Strong blooded cattle fit for breeding. Pleasant surprise to see you Hartons getting into a better business."

"Oh, sure thing, Sheriff. Turning over a new leaf. Decided a bit of ranching might be better business than our old ways, at that."

"Is, for most. Not sure it's good business though, killing a healthy female calf, well before her prime and on the trail like that. Won't get more than one good meal out of it, as I see it."

Langy looked at the carcass. He scratched his beard and drops of blood clung to it. "Well, I sure agree there, and if the damned thing didn't go and break its—"

"Reckon we ought to go sort out with Marl why he's selling a calf with Jake Mailer's brand on its ass, while we're on the subject." Hatchett pointed to the calf's rear end. A shape of a prewar automobile logo was there burned into its hide.

Hatchett's cigar had shortened considerably before Langy spoke again. He smiled and his coat opened and the handle of a silver automatic sparkled on his belt. "Come on, Sheriff. Them words about you truly is strong, but you don't want us to think you can throw down and outshoot seven of us faster than we you."

Hatchett dropped his cigar to the ground and stepped it out. "Langy, I don't want you to think anything. I want you to _understand_"—He looked Langy square in the eye, and what Langy saw looking back made his smile melt away—"that I won't have to."

Langy's chef, behind Hatchett, yelled "Now!" and grabbed the rifle up off the ground and brought it up and a deep, booming crack rang out and the man's head exploded clean off his shoulders. Another raider next to Langy reached for his own pistol, and bullet hit him in the back of the neck and blew through the front of it. Another drew a knife and tried to throw it and bullet hit him in the arm and spun him around and another hit him in the sternum and knocked him down. Hatchett's revolvers hadn't even left their holsters.

Langy's hands flew up. "I surrender! I surren—"

The two raiders standing just behind Langy to his left and right reached for sidearms. Hatchett's two revolvers appeared into his hands, ready and cocked—seemed to just appear there, as if by a magician's trick, like doves appearing from his sleeves. He fired both at once and made a bloody mess of both raiders where they stood. Plumes of orange flame blew from the front of the two revolvers and did so right at either side of Langy's face. Burning powder seared both of his eyes and the deep booms thundered in stereo in both of his ears. He fell to the ground gripping his face and screaming bloody murder.

All the raiders lay dead but for two—the one still spitting up a throat full of guts, who raised his hands and cried out for mercy, and Langy, who lay in the dirt in the fetal position moaning something about his eyes and ears. Hatchett's revolvers slid silently back into their holsters.

Men in wide brimmed hats and long coats materialized out of the darkness from every angle, all toting rifles and shotguns in their hands and looks of absolute contempt on their faces. The first to step into the circle of bodies was named Jack Marion, Hatchett's Chief Deputy.

"All right, Sheriff?"

"Right as ever was."

"You happy?"

"Hmm? Happy? Yeah, sure. Everyone is, but the ones who are dead. Story don't change."

"I hear that." He looked at Langy whimpering on the ground and spat. "Getting tired as hell of teaching these shitkickers this same lesson over and over."

Behind Marion, one of Hatchett's deputies kicked the other survivor in the chest where he lay on the ground, shucked a round into his shotgun, and raised it like he meant to blow the man's head apart.

Hatchett's voice boomed. "Stop. Right. There."

A heavyset man with a bushy beard looked back at Hatchett with the gun to his shoulder. "You saw what this scum did to Jake, Sheriff. And his wife. Jake Mailer was my friend, you rotten bastard!" He kicked the man again, and again. He aimed the shotgun. Hatchett grabbed the barrel and forced it skyward.

"And after he gets his trial for it, he'll hang for it," Hatchett said. "Until then, so long as you uphold my law, you also follow it. Understood?"

The deputy muttered and cursed. Hatchett handed him back his shotgun. "That goes for every one of you. Now, Marion and I can handle these two. The rest of you—I believe I heard those Brahmin running off in every direction after you spooked them with those shots. Nobody here is serving Jake's memory right letting his legacy run off into the desert to die. Get your fat asses after them. Now."

They dispersed. He went back to Marion, who had already seen to shackling both prisoners. Langy was still sobbing about his eyes and ears, and Hatchett could notice a little trickle of blood out of one ear and burn marks around his eyes.

"Tried to give him his rights, but I don't think he heard," Marion said.

The other prisoner was more aware. "You ought to just kill him," he said.

"In time," Hatchett said.

"He may be a damned stupid son of a bitch, Sheriff, but he's first cousin of Kango Harton. You should know you're bringing trouble on yourself."

Hatchett pulled the man up by his collar. "Little man, every shitkicker that ever kicked a shit had a hundred shit kicking cousins, and the only time a single one of them ever meant any more to me than the cost of a bullet is when they did some damned vile thing like kill a man and his family, rape his wife, and try to steal his livelihood. If someone wants to come at me, they can come, and I'll hang them from the same gallows I'm gonna hang you from, you understand?"

Hatchett threw the man back on the ground. "All right," he said. "Pack it up, Marion. We're heading back to Slickrock."

Several days march on old and tired legs brought Hatchett back to Yewtown, with all his deputies, some thirty head of cattle, and two prisoners coming along behind him. He told most of his deputies to herd the cattle into the fences and get them properly fed and watered. Hatchett, Marion, and his two full time deputies Coleman and Maury escorted the prisoners down the main street toward the sheriff's station and jailhouse.

In all those days' time, Langy's sight and sound still hadn't returned. He stumbled on blindly, pulled by the shackles around his wrists that were in turn attached to the other surviving prisoner, who gave his name only as Zipp. Langy had been humming or making noise for days without realizing it, and the droning sound had long passed the point of getting on Hatchett's nerves and was by now on the verge of breaking them.

Hatchett walked ahead of the prisoners with his rifle leaned against his shoulder—a big .45-70 lever gun stuffed with his own custom loaded, heavy-hard cast bullets. Some damned fool rang a bell announcing his arrival as he headed down main street and just about every townsperson came out of their homes and shops to stand on the decks and sidewalks and gawk at them. "Ya'll keep back," Hatchett called. "Escorting a prisoner."

"You left two of them alive, Sheriff?" a shopkeeper called.

"Not for long he didn't!" another answered.

"Look at that mangy coward. Damned scum raider!"

"You're going to dangle, boy. We're gonna watch you swing, sure enough!"

He could read the anger on their faces. Hatchett had never met him, but the man the raiders had killed had been well liked among many of the townsfolk of Slickrock. Those who didn't know him, probably a majority, heard enough good things about him to label him a good friend post mortem.

"You lot are wasting your breath," Marion said. And so, it seemed, was he.

They continued to throw their insults. Then someone threw a bottle. It smashed across the prisoner Zepp's head and sent glass flying. Zepp cried out, his head bleeding. A rock hit Langy in the ass and he started flailing about and screaming. All the townsfolk came running forward, snatching up anything they could find.

"You gonna stop this, Sheriff?" Marion said.

"Ain't no harm in it, so long as it's just little—"

Some kind of old vegetable bounded off Langy's head and splattered against the back of Hatchett's neck. He wiped it off and watched rotten juice slough off his fingers and finally discharged his big .45-70 skyward.

The rifle let off a boom so loud it made everyone in town jump a step back. Even Langy, still deaf, felt the concussion like a slap in the face. Hatchett turned in a circle. Seemed he had everyone's attention. "Next person that throws anything my way but a smile spends the night in a cell with these two, is that understood?"

A fat butcher in a bloody apron crossed his arms and said, "I'd pay good money for a night in a cell with those two, if you know what I mean, Sheriff."

"Well here's what I mean. You've had your aggressions out—now get back to your own business. Until these folks have had their trial they're under my protection. Next person tries to serve out his own brand of justice is going to have to taste test it first. Do I make myself clear? Now get out the damned way."

The walls of townsfolk parted and Hatchett went the rest of the way to the sheriff's office. Hatchett instructed Marion to see the prisoners to their cell, Coleman to go fetch Doc McCabe, and Maury to go and get him a glass of lemonade with ice from the diner across the street. As they headed off, Hatchett set his rifle down on the front porch leaned against the side of the building and sat himself down in the shade beside it in a fine oak rocking chair. He tipped his hat down to cover his eyes and leaned back and put his tired legs on the low rail around the porch to rest them. Maury came and put a lemonade in his hand and he sipped at it. Marion came and leaned against a post holding up the awning and sipped another lemonade Maury had brought for him. Coleman came up with the doctor in tow.

Doc McCabe brandished his doctor's bag. "I'm told you have yourself a survivor for once. Just maimed this one, did you? I'm surprised."

Hatchett jerked a thumb inward. "He's the one humming the worst song you ever heard. The other one may need some cleaning up and a stitch or two, at that."

Coleman escorted the doc inside.

Marion prodded Hatchett until he lowered his legs to let him by and he set himself down in the chair beside him. They both set their glasses on the table between them. They both put their legs up.

"Sure warmed up awful fast," Marion said, loosening his collar.

Hatchett hummed an affirmative.

The doctor came back out. He removed his rubber gloves and replaced them in his bag. "Want my diagnosis?"

"Terminal stupidity," Hatchett said.

"Perhaps. He's also deaf in both ears and blind in both eyes. Not sure how you managed that."

"Permanent?"

"Won't they be anyway, once you hang him?"

"I'd like him to be able to witness his own trial before that happens. Any way he'll recover?"

"Perhaps, with time—days, even weeks. I've done what I can. The rest is up to nature." Doc McCabe stepped off the porch and set off down the street.

Hatchett sipped his lemonade and scratched his chin—a beard had formed since he'd set out on the trail. "I suppose there's no harm in waiting."

"I reckon some of our citizens might not see it that way."

"Guess we'll be spending our nights like his then, instead of on patrol."

"Damned inconvenient, that."

That night, Hatchett and Marion sat in the same to chairs on the same front porch, bathed, shaved, and well fed—watching the stars and listening to the insects chirp away. An old retired bloodhound named Otis lay next to Hatchett's chair and he sat scratching it behind the ears with his free hand and smoking a pipe with the other. Marion sat wiping down his revolver with a bit of oily flannel.

"You're gonna polish the bluing right off that thing, if you keep at it," Hatchett said.

"Can't help it," Marion said.

He'd gotten himself a new revolver, an upgrade from a .38 to the big .44 Magnum—emulating the wisdom of his mentor, perhaps, though he still favored a more modern double-action model with a swing-out cylinder and also a shorter barrel.

"You ought to get yourself one of these. Lose those old hog legs."

Hatchett still carried his old long-barreled, single-action Blackhawks, with their hand-honed triggers and actions, Bisley style grip frames and hammer spurs, and aged yellow steer horn stocks. They required cocking each time they before agreed to fire, and only accepted a single round at a time—making reloading something of a trial.

"Well, you know what they say about old dogs." He picked a bug off Otis and flicked it into the street. "Just wouldn't feel right. Besides, I reckon they're part of the legend by now."

"Thought you hated being a legend."

"Oh, I surely do. Got to admit it has its benefits some nights." He referred to a legend that, far more than any amount of work he put into his job, kept the town of Slickrock and its people a peaceful one.

Marion put his .44 back in its holster. "I guess it is working tonight."

"Oh, we can't say that for sure until the saloons close." Hatchett looked at his pocket watch. "Which ought to be any moment now, I reckon."

Surely enough, not ten minutes later a crowd of drunken citizens came stumbling up and congregated around the entrance to the closed diner across the street. When around a dozen had gathered up and talked themselves into a state of courage, they approached.

"And here I was hoping for torches and pitchforks," Marion said. He stood and went to lean against the post at the front of the porch. "Evening, gentlemen," he said to the men.

Nobody said anything. A few started to, but their mouths just hung open for a while and then closed again. Finally, one—the butcher who'd spoke earlier, now dressed in a suit and tie instead of his apron—produced some sounds out of his, "We're, uh, here to express our dissatisfaction, Deputy."

"Chief Deputy."

"Oh, hell, Jimmy. We're being polite."

Marion smiled. "Toying with you. Proceed."

"Well, us boys. We got to talking. Well, we were down at the bar drinking to the memory of good old Jake Mailer. You know I got all my best meats from him, and he gave me the fairest prices anyone ever did for them. And frankly, nothing we can seem to say, nothing we can do, is making this remorse we got in us go away. We'd be taking up a collection, for his family, but they're dead too. It's a horrible situation every way you look at it—and those two men you got in there, they're the ones that done it."

"Not until a jury decides that in a court of law, they ain't," Marion said.

"Maybe not to you, but for god's sake, Chief Deputy. We know sure as hell they did it, and we don't see why we got to be all so tore up like this waiting for that to happen, with them just sitting in there, comfortable and proud of themselves—especially when you're now saying you don't even know when that trial is going to be, on account of one having some kind of injury. We don't see how any person should expect us to just deal with this turmoil what's inside of us, when they could easily do for us the only thing that would cure us of it, and what with them, with their jobs being to serve us, and us paying their…"

Someone nudged him and whispered something and his voice trailed off.

"You want to speed things up, then. Hang them right now."

The butcher nodded. "We surely do. And maybe, we were thinking, maybe even that's too good for them, and that it would help us to sleep if we were to rough them up first. Let them feel what they inflicted on others. Like what they done to Jake Mailer before they killed him. Like they did to his wife."

Marion raised an eyebrow. "Just like they did to his wife? You want to do _that_? What the hell is wrong with you, Bill?"

"What? No! Not like that. We ain't sick like that."

"Well, why not? You're talking about doing everything to him that they done first. An eye for an eye don't mean anything if you do an ear instead of an eye."

"This is about them. We aren't going to debase ourselves that way."

"What you're talking about doing…that's exactly what you're going to do. You're going to make a mockery of yourselves, the justice system this town stands on, and therefore this town itself. Making villains out of yourselves isn't going to take away that violence in you. It's going to feed it. Do you understand the point I'm making?"

"Well couldn't we just…hang them now, then? Like we're gonna anyway?"

Marion took a breath. "Look, you boys are operating just about the most well-mannered lynch mob I ever did see, but that don't change that you're a lynch mob, and those leave one damned horrible taste in my mouth. You go on home now, and we'll all part on the same good terms we've always been on. Press this issue, and it'll be another matter."

The butcher stared at his feet. He turned around and walked out through the crowd. In time the rest of the crowd dispersed and everyone went their own ways. One man in a suit remained behind.

"Hell, Marion. If Bill won't say it I will: You two work for us, for the people of this town."

"You got a point, Clancy?"

"We don't pay you to stand up there and tell us what we can and can't do. I sure as hell bet there's more in this town want to see that murderer in there hanged on our time, rather than this."

"If you get that in writing—if democracy wills it, then we'll surely step aside. But keep in mind that will be last you'll see of me or Hatchett. We serve a town governed by laws and civility. If you want to lose the security we provide to debase yourselves to the blind, deaf idiot raider in there sobbing to himself like a child, you go get everyone else to agree with you."

"Maybe some of us wouldn't much mind that, either." Clancy stomped off.

"I've no doubt." Marion came and sat back down. "I thought that went pretty well."

"Couldn't have handled it better myself," Hatchett said.

"Now do you suppose we can chalk that bit of pleasantness up to my powers of persuasion, the innate civil temperament of Slickrock's citizenry, or to the legend of Sheriff Death, who didn't even stand up or say a damned word during that exchange?"

"Let's call it equal parts," Hatchett said.

"I got to get me one of them legends," Marion said.

"If you got to get one the way I got mine," Hatchett said, "you're better off without it."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: De Opressione Liberare

**Desolation Zone Patrol – Hunting a Ghost Story – The Runaway – Emancipation Proclamation – God Damned Marathon – Kango Speaks – A Situation Here – Cry Havoc – Resurrection in a Gunfight – Fire Station – Mouse Holing – Room by Room – The Negotiator – Crocket Never Misses – The Quarry Escapes – New Recruits**

They were somewhere on the far fringes of the Free Wastes territory, on land considered uninhabitable or even traversable by most men. An area that had once been a densely populated, suburbs-fringed town and home to more people, Samuel wagered, than he could even say were alive today. It had seen a direct hit or nearly one in the war—a million lives snuffed out in an instant, and a land left as desolate as the floor of a microwave. In places the ground still seemed freshly burnt, scorched black and permanently barren, rough, and sharp as broken glass. Ancient structures, homes and storefronts and offices, or at least the crumbling ruins of them, stood all around them. Shards of shattered concrete suggested streets and sidewalks, and the rusting hulks of what had once been vehicles spotted the area. And if one looked close, among the rubble collecting around his feet, he wouldn't have to look long to find the bones of someone long dead, or the empty eyes of a human skull staring up at him.

A harsh wind blew, pressing against Samuel as he walked across the fractured earth. Through the dead streets and crumbling buildings' open doorways and missing windows the wind seemed to howl faintly like the spirits of the dead still screaming from the past, still caught in the fires of war.

"Rad meter's rising as we go, Sir," said Johnston—their environment and tech specialist, equipped with a wrist mounted computer complemented by a .45-caliber grease gun. He walked far behind Samuel and spoke in a whisper, but his voice carried clear as day over the inbuilt speaker in Samuel's helmet. "The lack of standing structures suggests an impact in the area. Probably has a lot to do with it. Suggest we alter our course a bit."

"Agreed," said Samuel. He addressed the point man at the head of the line. "Knowles, let's cut left down that street. Watch those scrap heaps for critters."

"Always do, Major." Knowles peered into the crumbling ruin of a storefront with the flashlight affixed to the end of her riot shotgun and moved past it. The men coming up behind her did the same with their rifles.

There were eight of them in all, walking in tandem down the ancient city streets. They dressed in matching uniforms most recognizable for their russet-colored trench coats, standard khaki cloth but worn over full-body advanced polymer combat armor finished in desert-pattern camouflage. They wore full-face helmets with integrated gas masks, low-light optics, and radio communications. They carried 5.56mm automatic carbines with specialists even better armed. Faceless, silent, and extremely deadly—the very most elite soldiers in the service of the Free Wastes Alliance, the unit Major Samuel Greene had personally formed and named his Liberator Commandos.

"Someone want to remind me, again, what we're doing out here?" said Danziger. He walked near the back and, being the largest of them, carried the heaviest weapon—a 5.56mm light machinegun, with belts of linked ammunition wrapping over both shoulders and around his waist.

Crockett answered. "Hunting deathclaws, of course." Their designated marksman—he scanned distant streets and rooftops with a .308 sniper rifle.

"Oh, right. Good. For a minute I thought we were chasing wild gooses."

For weeks, "deathclaw" had been a word that carried across the Free Wastes like a chilly wind—a deathclaw or a pack of them with an insatiable hunger and insatiable hatred for humankind on a rampage, dragging anyone who dared stray away from the larger towns out of their homes and into the night. Frightened people turned to their protectors for help against all threats, real and perceived. The FWA had no choice but step forward.

"We're doing our duty," Samuel said. "That's the only thing you need to think, Danziger."

"Yeah, yeah. I got to say though," Danziger said. "It's reaching the point I'd _love_ to see a deathclaw pop out about now."

"Don't, man." said Knowles. "Just, don't."

"What? What'd I say?"

"That's one thing you never ever wish for, Danziger," said Crocket. "The minute you underestimate one of those things—that's when it kills you."

"Major, you don't believe this deathclaw shit, do you?"

Samuel had never even seen a deathclaw. The rumors smelled like so many ghost stories to him. And he supposed he was in the right place to pursue a ghost story. Every so often they'd come upon a roach or rat scurrying in the shadows, but they walked in a place that had died long ago, and of which only ghosts could claim ownership.

"I believe something stole those people into the night. Maybe it's not a deathclaw, but it's something that obviously likes the dark and has made a home in some shady corner of my territory. And sooner or later I'm gonna find it, and kill it."

"Raiders, you mean," Danziger said.

_Raiders_. The mention of the word made Samuel's teeth grind. Damn right, it was raiders. What else had it ever been, or ever would be.

"I'm not jumping to any conclusions," Samuel said.

"Movement," Knowles said suddenly, dropping low.

They each dropped low and readied their weapons. Knowles crouched beside the edge of a crumbling wall looking around it. She gestured that she had eyes on a target. Samuel crept slowly to the front to crouch next her.

"Around the corner and straight on. Fifty meters," Knowles said.

"Not another rat?"

"Too tall. Look."

Out of the darkness a lone figure came running toward them. Knowles took aim. Samuel tapped her arm—"Wait," he said.

It was a man, covered in filth and clad in rags. He ran as though it pained him to and his breath sounded ragged and forced even from a distance. His course would take them directly past them, and likely straight into the radiation they had avoided. Samuel rose and stepped back. "He's unarmed. Stop him, quietly."

"Roger that." Knowles eased back behind the cover of the wall, slung her shotgun, and waited. She tapped on finger against the side of the wall, counting the footfalls growing steadily louder and nearer. When the man came running into view she leapt out in front of him. Before he could stop himself she went low and he went over her. He crashed down into the dirt, an attempt at a scream escaping his breathless lungs as a hushed yelp.

Before he could rise, she caught him in a neck lock and dragged him back behind the wall and pinned him against it, one gloved hand over his mouth and the other pinning his arms. His eyes bulged and he struggled to break free. Samuel stepped forward and put the wide maw of his carbine against the man's forehead. He raised a finger to the front of his gas mask where his lips would be and said quietly, "Shhh."

The man's eyes darted around at the squad of faceless killers gathered around him. He stopped fighting—opened his hands in surrender though he couldn't raise his arms. The man appeared extremely emaciated and exhausted. There were welts all about his bare chest and arms. His shoes were made of little more than strips of wrapped cloth and leather—fraying apart from running so far on the blasted earth. Blood had soaked through them so wetly he left bloody footprints wherever he walked. Old, deep scars encircled his wrists and ankles. Samuel knew everything he needed to about the man at a glance. He lowered his carbine and tapped Knowles on the back of the helmet and gave her a nod. She let the poor man go and stepped back.

"Easy, now," Samuel said.

"Oh. Oh god. Oh thank god," the man said. He spoke between extremely ragged breaths. "You're not…you're not them. But who…who are you? What do you want with me?"

"Hey, hey. I said _easy_," Samuel said. "You're among friends."

The man's eyes widened further. "Oh my god. You aren't…you are. The FWA. You're them. I did it. I actually found you."

"Looks like it, though you picked just about the last place you could have looked. Who were you afraid we were?"

"Kango. Kango and his men."

Samuel felt the heat of rage rising into his face. Kango. Another upstart raider general—one living tauntingly just outside the fringes of FWA territory.

"We were…me, some others. We were his slaves, but someone…someone forgot to bolt the door to our bunkhouse one night. We decided to run. We'd heard of a place, a region to the south, where people were given safe quarter. Where the FWA will stand up for them, protect them. A place raiders and slavers are terrified to go near—a place, and a man. Have you met…do you know Samuel Greene?"

Danziger laughed somewhere in back. Samuel squeezed the man's shoulder. "Keep talking."

"Yes. Some of us…some of us were killed trying to escape. Others wounded. We ran as far as we could, but the wounded slowed us down. The rest, they're all still holed up in a building, back that way. I was the fastest runner…they gave me the rest of the water and said…said I should run for help."

The man went into a brief coughing fit. Knowles offered him a canteen. He accepted it eagerly and guzzled water and let out a final hacking cough. "Thank you. Thank you."

"You and the rest," Samuel said. "You were kidnapped by Kango, recently? From around these parts?"

"I fucking knew it," Danziger said.

The man took another long draw of the water, coughed again. "What? Uh. No, no. Kango bought most of us from slavers. I don't know where I'm really from. I was just a boy. It was near a coast, very far away. On some cliffs overlooking the sea. It was so beautiful…"

Samuel snapped his fingers in the man's face. "Focus, now."

"Yes, yes—the others! You have to go to them, now, if it's not already too late. Kango and his men have been chasing us for days—right behind us the whole way."

"How far?"

"The sun was going down when I left. I've been running since. I don't know exactly."

Johnston chimed in. "That can't be too far at all. If Kango's really on top of them, he's actually set foot inside our territory."

"Oh, I fucking hope so," Crockett said. "I've been waiting for a chance at that son of a bitch."

There was a raider on Samuel's land. He could feel his pulse quickening, his face turning flush. He took a deep breath. He patted the man on the shoulder and stood. "Knowles, show this man a map. Find me this building he says his friends are in." He turned to Johnston, who wore a manpack radio the size of a cereal box on his back—its range extending hundreds of miles beyond the limited reach of their headsets. "Johnston, get on that radio. I think the 3rd Scouts have the camp nearest to that area."

"Those boys are some of the greenest we've got, Major," Crocket said.

"Then it's time they got some experience. Get them to send a small team and a medic to look after our friend here, and get the rest of them to head to that building in case we don't make it there first. Knowles, you figured it out yet?"

"Says they're in an old fire station, Major. There's two in any kind of range in that direction."

"Two?"

"Only one is standing—good thing we updated these old maps. 13 West Morland."

"Johnston."

"On it, Major."

Samuel looked east, toward the fire station. Several hours march, even at full running speed. "One of you…Cranston. You stay with this guy until the scouts arrive to relieve you."

"And miss all the fun?"

"Check yourself, Cranston."

"Of course."

"No," the man said. "I will be all right. All go."

"You're sure?" Samuel said.

"I feel safer than I feel for my friends. Use all you have to help them. If I had the strength left to follow, and a weapon like yours, I would come with you and fight."

Samuel reached around to the back of his belt and drew the short, blunt .45 Commander he carried to backup his primary sidearm and pressed it into the man's hand. "Someday you'll have both. This will do for now. What's your name?"

"Manu. Short for…something. I do not remember."

"Pleased to meet you, Manu. My name is Samuel Greene."

He offered his hand to Manu, and Manu took it. "You…?"

"No time to talk. When we meet again, I'll see you wearing an FWA uniform." Samuel broke free and turned to his commandos. "Shed off all unnecessary weight and gear. We've got a run ahead of us, Commandos. If Kango leaves my land before I have a chance to talk to him, it's going to ruin my whole fucking day."

The sun rose red over the wasteland, bathing the ruined city in light as red as blood. Samuel ran in the direction of the rising sun as fast as his legs would obey, his muscles searing from the exertion of the run combined with carrying the weight of his armor and weapons and gear. He'd run ten times as far if he needed to. A raider had dared set foot on his territory—Samuel would make him regret it.

After hours of running Samuel began to make out the rumbling sound of distant gunfire somewhere far ahead. He slowed to a stop and his men piled around, panting and wheezing. "Johnston. Find out where those Scouts are. Hurry."

"Getting a hell of a work out, here," Danziger said. His machine-gun was the heaviest load.

"That refugee, half starved with no shoes, ran this far. So can we."

Johnston punched keys on his wrist computer and put a hand to his headset. "I'm not getting anything, Major."

Samuel wasted no more time standing around and no more breath to speak as he ran. Dawn had fully broken by the time they neared the crumbling urban center where the old fire house stood intact at the center of a ring of shattered buildings. Before they came into view of the fire house, Samuel slowed to a halt and stopped in an alleyway by the ruins of an ancient drug store. He leaned against the wall gasping for breath and unscrewed the cap from a steel canteen. He drank most of the canteen's contents—purified water—in a single draw and poured the rest down the front of his armor.

His feet ached and bled in at least two places. His body felt chafed and blistered all over from the friction of running with his equipment on. Sweat soaked through his armor, pouring off of him. Knowles nearly collapsed beside him. "We all but just ran a god damn marathon, Major."

They all looked drained to the point of exhaustion. He and his men maintained their top physical condition through constant training. At least once a week, he led them on a sixteen mile march in full armor. But this hadn't been a march—this had been a dash. And not a single man had fallen behind.

"Anyone here feel like they aren't up for further action?"

They breathed heavily, but none uttered a word of complaint.

"I'm proud of you, Commandos." Samuel pulled on his helmet and face mask and readied his weapon. His men did the same. "I don't know what we're walking into now. Move slow, move careful. No cowboy shit. Split into two. Cover both sides of the street. Knowles, you're on point. Move."

They moved in two groups along either side of the rubble-strewn street. Samuel could see the top of the old fire house over the tops of the crumbling buildings that surrounded it—a solitary complete structure, built to last. Surely enough, Samuel could make out the faded yellow tri-foil sign near the top of the building indicating it housed a public fallout shelter in its basement. Perhaps some time long ago, people had found refuge there once before.

"Listen," Knowles whispered over her headset.

Samuel soon became aware of the sound of someone talking, or more aptly shouting. He turned up the amplification of the earphones built into his helmet, and he could hear every distant sound in the largely silent city. His men breathing, the gravel crunching under their feet as they crept forward, and a man pronouncing his words in a very angry tone.

"—and soon, fools, you will learn firsthand the cost of defying your master. You will understand that you are my cattle. You are less than my cattle. You exist at my whim, just as you die at my whim. When your existence is not at my whim, when you become an annoyance to me, then…then you will beg me for your death."

Kango had a deep and booming voice—and it appeared he liked the sound of it enough to want to use it as loudly as he could. Samuel heard every word clearly, and every word made his grip tighten around the handle of his rifle.

"Looks like we're a little late," Danziger whispered. He had the lead of the second group.

"But Kango's still here," Samuel said. "Plenty of time to make this day a good one." He had no eyes on Kango from where he stood. He scanned the buildings around them. One tall, narrow stack of offices had mostly caved in, but a rusted fire escape on their side ran up to a top floor higher than most of the buildings around it.

"Crocket."

"I see it, Major. Moving into position." Crocket broke off from his group and started to climb, careful to test each set of metal stairs that it would take his weight and to minimize the sound of his footsteps on the metal grating.

"Let me know what you see when you get there. Knowles, move up. Stay out of sight."

Knowles crept forward with her shotgun leveled. She stopped at a corner and knelt down. "I have eyes on Romeos. Fifty yards. Seeing at least three."

"I'm moving up." Samuel stepped forward to stand beside her. She kept low with her shotgun forward. He leaned over her to see around the corner. An overturned truck and a wall of piled rubble blocked most of his view of the front of the fire house. He could see at least three raiders—one leaned against the truck, another standing over the piled rubble, and a third atop the truck kneeling. They were all watching inward, toward the entrance to the fire station. They wore a mix of leather hide and military or police style armor, embellished in the typical raider fashion with bones or scalps or human ears along with decorative trinkets and cloth scraps—trophies of previous raids and battles. Most carried automatic rifles as well as knives, grenades, and side arms. They were as well equipped as any raiders he had seen in a very long time. Kango, it seemed, was a threat he should have dealt with long ago.

Somewhere just beyond the obstacles obstructing his view, Kango continued his tirade. "You think _Samuel Greene_ can help you? Do you understand now, how foolish you were to come here? Samuel Greene is just another rat, a cockroach to be crushed under the heel of my boot. There is only one god in this wasteland, and that is Kango."

"Crocket."

"In position now. Hmmm. Major, we have a situation here."

"Don't sugar coat it on my account."

"I have eyes on twelve, fifteen…almost twenty Romeos. They're gathered around the entrance to the fire station in a ragged circle. In the middle—our refugees, eight of them. And then, well. Eight Scouts. Sitting, hands tied."

Samuel's heart pounded. "The 3rd Scouts? Taken prisoner?"

"Mother fucker…" Knowles muttered.

"At least three of them are dead already. I can't see their…oh god. They have no… Oh Christ, Major. They're executing them. With a sword. Major, I have a shot…"

"Hold fire," Samuel said. "Hold fire until I give the command."

"They're about to kill another. Major he's going to do it right now."

"I said hold fire until we are in position." Samuel pulled Knowles away and raced back in the opposite direction. "Danziger, move your team into position to attack the enemy from this side. Knowles, Johnston, Cranston, on me. Knowles, find me a route through these buildings. We have to be able to flank them from both sides."

"Roger that." Knowles dashed past him and down an alley crowded with trash and rubble. She leapt a rusting heap of a dumpster and swung around a bisecting alley. Samuel and his two others followed close behind.

"Crocket, do you have eyes—"

"They just executed another Scout."

Samuel fought back a howl of rage. "_Crocket_, do you have eyes on that mother fucker Kango."

"I see the one with the sword, the one speaking. He is wearing power armor."

"That's Kango."

"Where'd he get power armor?" Cranston said.

"Rumor is he killed one of the Khan's officers fleeing the region in his sleep. Ain't so scary as it sounds," Danziger said. "It don't have any power."

"Isn't that heavy as hell?"

"He ain't known for being real fast."

"Quiet," Samuel said. "Crocket, when I give the order, shoot that mother fucker in the head. Those tungsten tipped rounds Sheila made up for you ought to do the trick, armor or no."

"He's getting ready to kill another Scout."

"When I give the order, and not a moment sooner."

Samuel's team emerged onto another open street, facing toward the fire house from the opposite direction. A raider stood near the mouth of the alley, his back to them as they emerged. Knowles let her shotgun hang on its sling and drew a wicked black commando dagger from a vertical scabbard over her left breast. In an instant she moved behind the man, pulled back on his greasy mess of hair, and thrust the tip of the blade deep into his spine at the base of his skull. He didn't get the chance to utter a single sound. She seized him around the neck and dragged his limp body back into the cover of the alley.

While she withdrew he blade, Samuel crept forward out of the alley and knelt behind the rusted remains of a pickup truck half buried in concrete. He looked up through the back window, over the skeletal remains of the truck's long dead owner, and through the empty space where the truck's windshield had been. From there, his view was unobstructed. There were raiders all around—nearly twenty, as Crocket had said. A group of escaped slaves dressed in the same rags Manu had worn were gathered in a circle in the middle of a larger circle of FWA soldiers in Scout uniforms—light infantry equipped for long range wasteland patrol with only basic combat training and no armor excepting their steel pot helmets. They knelt on their knees with their hands bound behind them.

Samuel knew, then, what a mistake it had been to send his Scouts ahead. Too eager to catch and punish another raider. Too confident in even his most freshly recruited soldiers. Too quick to underestimate how dangerous organized raiders could be. You damn stupid bastard, he said to himself. This is your fault.

Kango lumbered about in his armor painted bright red—painted, it appeared, to cover up the engraving and decorative embellishments added by its previous owner, one of Garvis Khan's lieutenants. The armor made no sound as it moved—none of that electric-hydraulic whine that still haunted Samuel's dreams every night. It had been almost a decade since Samuel had seen that armor. Powered or no, repainted or no, it brought back the very worst memories of the war he had waged against another, more formidable raider long ago. It made him crave the sight of blood seeping out of it.

Of blood, there was no shortage. Kango wielded a huge sword made, it appeared, from the flattened and sharpened bumper of an automobile. Blood dripped all down the blade and Kango's forearm. He walked in a circle around his ring of prisoners, playing some sort of sinister game of duck-duck-goose. He had beheaded three of the Scouts already—their bodies positioned so that the fountains of blood each let off sprayed onto the circle of escaped slaves in the center. The slaves were already soaked with it. While Samuel watched, he stopped behind another Scout, raised his blade, and spoke.

"And you, the fourth. The rest will replace the slaves I have lost. Four of you will stay behind, to deliver my message to the cockroach you call your champion. Samuel Greene will know that a new apocalypse has come at last, and that—"

"Shut this fuck head up, Crocket," Samuel said.

A sharp buzzing sound zipped through the air like a furious insect. Kango's head jerked slightly to the side, and his metal helmet rang like a bell. He stood for a moment, teetering lazily, before he finally slumped forward and fell with a noisy crash. The raiders standing all around gawked for a moment until another raider coughed blood and dropped dead, and then they all went into a kind of frenzy.

Two of them ran out in front of the truck. Samuel opened up with his carbine through it—the little rifle pounding his shoulder and letting off an immense fireball with each shot. The bullets tore huge, bloody chunks out of the two raiders, blowing them back onto the street with such force that they lifted clouds of dust around them. While the standard issue for FWA forces was the 5.56mm service rifle, Samuel had never cared for the cartridge it fired—had come to despise it after no less than a dozen shots had been required to put down a raider pumped full of Jet who had come at him with a machete. He had commissioned his gunsmith to modify his service rifle with a shorter barrel chambered for custom cartridge made from a stretched 12.7mm pistol casing. The magazine held half as many rounds—only ten—but a single shot could stop a charging bull Brahmin, never mind a raider, in its tracks.

The raiders scurried about like ants. Samuel swung his rifle around the side of the vehicle and sidestepped, the gun locked to his shoulder, pivoting his body like a turret. Another raider emerged. Two shots to the chest bowled him over. Samuel's hand went to the magazine release and then to his belt. Before his spent magazine had completed its first bounce at his feet he had already slapped in another. Knowles and Johnston and Cranston came up beside him firing rapidly, dropping wave after wave of surprised raiders before they could get off a single shot. From the other side of the clearing, Samuel heard and then saw Danziger flanking from the opposite side, pouring rounds out of his machine-gun—rapid firing from the shoulder with a level of accuracy only a Liberator Commando could boast. Crocket's shots continued to pick off loose stragglers from long range.

The headphones that amplified quiet noises in Samuel's helmet also served to muffle noises so loud that they could damage hearing. They made a gunfight seem almost serene. For Samuel, battle had always felt that way. He felt a calmness among the chaos and bloodshed he didn't feel anywhere else.

Bullets impacted around Samuel as he walked into the heart of the fight—raiders trying to return fire, firing blind. Samuel let his men deal with those targets. He moved double-time toward the ring of hostages and refugees—choosing targets among and around them and picking them off with the ruthless precision and economy of movement he practiced against his steel targets on the range. He double-tapped one raider, then another, and then another. Suddenly something large and red rose quaking out of the dust of battle behind the wall of hostages and seized a young Scout trooper around the neck and pulled him to his feet. Samuel's sights shot toward the movement, his finger seizing the trigger. He froze.

Kango was back on his feet. Blood poured out of the holes in the respirator on the front of his helmet. He roared something at the high pitch of a shriek but Samuel couldn't understand a word. He held his sword to the Scout's neck and began to walk backward. The ropes around Scout's arms and neck were attached to three other Scouts as well, and Kango pulled them along with him. Seeing their leader rising, several raiders ran forward and latched onto the other hostages. Samuel shot one of them as he came running up and blew off the top of his head, showering Kango with blood and brains.

Samuel dropped his empty magazine and rammed in another. Kango's eyes—large and black behind the missing visor of his helmet—met Samuel's. Then Kango's face became a dull blur as Samuel's focus returned to his front sight, and he prepared to fire.

A bullet hit Samuel high up near the top of his left shoulder, jolting the nerves and arteries that ran up into his neck and instantly knocking the senses out of him. The next he knew he lay on his back and Knowles had hold of the back of his collar dragging him behind cover. Samuel's whole left side throbbed with pain and he could hardly feel his left arm. Samuel fought free and looked up from over his cover just in time to see Kango and his remaining men pouring into the open front doors of the fire station and the heavy metal garage door coming down with a heavy crash.

He forced himself to rise—felt the sore spot under his armor, and checked his hand for blood. He found only a small trace of blood where the blunt force had ruptured a blood vessel under his skin. It was going to hurt like hell by next morning. Over a dozen raiders lay dead or dying. His commandos regrouped around him.

"Are you all right, Major?" Knowles said.

"I'll be all right when Kango is dead."

Crocket's voice came over his headset, "Sir, I'm sorry. I don't know how Kango survived that shot. I swear I got him right in the head, and when he got back up—I was reloading."

"It's all right, Crocket. You got him, sure enough." Samuel looked around. "Where are the hostages?"

"I'm with them," Johnston's voice said. "Back in the alley. Got out with six refugees—one was killed in the skirmish. Trying to patch up a hole in another. Have two Scouts also. They're asking me for permission to pick up rifles. They're pretty beat up."

"Tell them to sit tight."

"Kango and his men pulled four of our Scouts into the fire house and sealed themselves inside," Knowles said.

"Is there a way out the back of there?"

"Negative," Crocket said. "There may have been once. A skyscraper collapsed around that side. Its whole back end is buried under a hundred thousand tons of rubble."

"We have him cornered, then," Samuel said. Still gonna be a good day, he thought.

A chattering burst of machinegun fire erupted out of one of the upper floor windows of the fire house. The commandos dove behind cover as a hail of bullets strafed their concrete barrier left and right. Danziger swung his machinegun over the top and let out a long burst of suppressing fire back into the windows. The commandos rose firing. The machinegun thudded out another burst through their fire.

Samuel let his carbine hang on its sling and reached around over his left shoulder and unlimbered the big 40mm grenade launcher strapped to his pack. Another custom job—modified with a shortened barrel, streamlined sights, and a stock whittled down to a thin, grooved pistol-style handle. The machinegun let out another drawn out burst, bullets ripping apart the already pulverized world around Samuel. Samuel aimed and fired and sent a 40mm High Explosive grenade through the window and it rewarded him with a fiery orange plume back out of the same window and several across from it as well. Wordlessly he leapt the barrier and marched forward already loading another grenade—breaking open the breech, chucking the spent casing, drawing another off the bandolier on the front of his armor, plugging it into the smoking breech. He chose a special grenade marked with orange tape—a shaped charge with a sabot payload designed for breaching heavy armor.

"Commandos, on me."

His left arm still had little feeling in it—he flipped the barrel shut with one hand and fired one handed into the corner of the steel door where it met brick. The force of the explosion pushed back against him. The metal door flexed and tore like tin foil. A whole section of brick wall crumbled and pulverized masonry cascaded down around a smoke filled opening rapidly excavated.

Samuel let another spent casing fall to the ground as his feet. He kept walking. He fed another 40mm shell into the breech and snapped it shut. A beehive canister, loaded with an overdose of tungsten darts that essentially turned the launcher into a enormous shotgun. Through the smoke and dust filling the interior space of the fire station Samuel witnessed muzzle flare as choking, coughing raiders fired blind out into space. He darted to the side, hearing bullets whizzing past him. He stepped right up to the excavated gateway, put the muzzle of the launcher through it, and unleashed hell. As the colossal boom subsided the screams of the maimed and dying rewarded him.

Knowles was first through the mouse hole. Her shotgun boomed three times in rapid succession. Samuel let the launcher hang on its bungee-cord shoulder strap and swung in behind her with his big 12.7 carbine held high. She led him around the side of a decaying fire truck with its cabin ripped open like wrapping paper by Samuel's grenade. She shot a raider in the chest, blasting him backward with a circle of holes as wide as a fist punched out of his midsection. Samuel aimed past her and shot another in the chin, blowing off his lower jaw. Samuel heard Cranston unload a burst with his rifle and assumed another raider had met his end somewhere behind him. He didn't stop to check.

As they approached a doorway at the back of the garage a voice bellowed out at them—"FWA! Stop where you're at! If you come any closer, we will kill these prisoners." Not Kango's voice—some lesser raider, with the tremble and squeak of the fear of death in his voice. "Do you hear me out there? We have three of your men in here. There are three of us, and we each have a gun to one of their heads."

Knowles parked herself at the edge of the doorframe. "How you want to play this, Major?"

"We hear you," Samuel yelled back. "You hoping to negotiate? Where's Kango?"

After a while, a voice yelled back, "Just stay the fuck out. If I see that door open, we shoot—understand? I blow this guy's brains all over the walls. Stay out."

Knowles looked back over her shoulder at Samuel. Behind Samuel, the rest of his commandos had finished clearing out the garage and upper floor of the fire station and were coming toward him. Samuel held up a hand to stop them. "All right, switch up. Johnston."

Knowles stepped aside and allowed Johnston to have his place beside the doorframe. Johnston unfurled a length of wire on his belt and slid one end through the crack under the doorway and plugged the other end into the computer display on his wrist. The screen flickered on and displayed in black and green a rough image of the scene beyond the doorway.

Three raiders with nowhere to go were huddled into the far corners of the room—two to one corner and one in another. They stood with the three Scouts on their knees positioned in front of them, their hands tied and mouths gagged. A fourth figure lay flat on the floor, unmoving. It was hard to make out in the limited clarity of the image. There seemed to be another door at the far end of the room.

The audio amplifiers in Samuel's helmet picked up the sounds of terrified breathing, raiders still coughing on the dust in the air. He could hear them whispering to each other through the door.

"I can't believe that son of a bitch left us here. We were right behind him. He looked right at us and slammed that fucking door right in our faces."

"Why would he do that? How could he think we wouldn't be more use in there alive than dead out here? I mean, he took his fucking _dogs_, but not us?"

"Shut the fuck up. Just let me think for a fucking minute. Fuck."

"What the fuck am I doing here? We're supposed to be chasing down runaways, not fighting the fucking FWA. How did they even find us here?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"I can't believe this shit."

"Where do you suppose that door goes?" Samuel whispered.

"The basement, I would guess," Johnston said. "This was one of a number of designated fallout shelters. Sounds like Kango barricaded himself inside."

"Just keeps trapping himself in deeper, huh."

Samuel tapped Johnston's shoulder and nodded for him to move away. Samuel took his place and called through the door. "All right, gentlemen. I understand we are at a bit of an impasse. You don't want to die, and I don't want my men in there with you to die. Maybe we can both get what we want."

"Fuck you, FWA."

"Fuck me? No, let's get one thing straight here. _You _are the one who is fucked. We just steamrolled every one of your punk ass friends. You aren't even a small inconvenience, except you have something I want. Now you are going to listen to every word I have to say. Otherwise you're not worth the breath, and I'm just going to chuck a big fucking grenade in there and get on with my own pressing business."

For a moment there was silence.

"I told you, we have three of your men in here—"

"How am I supposed to know that? And why should I care? I just killed some twenty of you mother fuckers. If I lose three men—hell, that's still a pretty good ratio of us to you. I'll still probably get an award for that shit. I am under no obligation to go easy on you right now. But I am willing to, because I am just that nice a guy."

The three men bickered among themselves for a moment. "You expect us to believe you'll let us go?"

"Why not? I only care about one person right now—and that's Kango. He's the only one I have anything to settle with. And you've probably got nothing against me, for that matter. You're probably just a hired gun, like me. And the man who hired you just left you alone to deal with this mess yourself. What the hell do you owe him?"

Samuel waited for a reply.

"You'll really just let us go?"

"As you just saw, one of my boys is worth a whole handful of you lot. So fuck yes. In exchange for those three, yes—you can go back to your families."

"If we let them come out, then you'll just leave?"

Samuel was fast running out of patience. "Well, no. You see I don't care about you, but I care about Kango. And you're between me and him, so we're going to have to meet at some point. So before we talk any further, I'm going to open this door. Is that all right?"

"Don't even think about it."

"For fuck's sake, mother fucker. Are you even listening? I have to see that my men are alive before I care that you might kill them. I tell you what…I'll throw in my weapon, and I'll come in alone. I'll even close the door behind me. Then we can talk, face to face, like men."

"You think we're going to fall for— No! Stop that now! Don't do it!"

Samuel turned the knob and eased the door open. "See? That wasn't so hard. Step one finished. Quick and easy. Now here."

Samuel pulled the quick detach string and to unhook his carbine from its sling and tossed it into the room. "And there's my weapon. Step two. I am unarmed."

"Wait, all right? Just wait. Let me think for a minute."

"Don't take too long. Remember you're standing between me and Kango."

Samuel unhooked his 40mm launcher as well and handed it back to Knowles. "What are you doing, Major?" she said.

Samuel brushed back the breast of his coat to expose the pistol in a western style open top holster on his belt. He undid the buckle holding it in place and drew the pistol and pressed back the slide to check that a fat .45 hardball round was chambered. Another custom job, and his very favorite—a .45 match target pistol with custom sights, extended controls, a hand-honed trigger, and a one-inch extended barrel and slide, the slide engraved with the words _de oppressione liberare_ meaning "from a man oppressed, a man free." He holstered the pistol and tucked it away, then pushed the holster around to the small of his back and out of sight and let his coat fall back over it.

He felt his sore shoulder. The pain was still intense, but feeling had returned to his arm and hand. He flexed his fingers, held up his hands, and stepped into the doorway.

The three raiders stiffened and stared at him wide-eyed as he entered. The lead raider's pistol went from his hostage's head to Samuel, then back to his hostage's head, then to Samuel again. The three Scouts looked at him with bloody faces, gagged mouths, and wide eyes. "Easy now," Samuel said. He drew open the ends of his coat with two fingers, to show that it concealed no weapons. "You can see, I'm unarmed."

"I told you to wait," the raider said.

"I waited. You took too long."

"Okay, you've seen. Your men are alive."

The body of another Scout lay on the floor, and the Scout's head lay nearby. A trail of blood led across the room to a heavy steel door with a tri-foil Fallout shelter sign on it. Samuel looked at the body and at the raider.

"That wasn't us. Kango did that. He killed them all."

"I understand," Samuel said. He's going to wish for a death so clean when I get my hands on him, Samuel thought. "Kango's got nowhere left to go. You three do, if you play nice." Samuel pointed at the leader. "You. Come here."

"What?"

"You showed me yours, now I'll show you mine."

After a bit of coaxing the raider came to the door. Samuel opened it for him and he looked out. Samuel's commandos stood together, weapons ready. "Lower them, boys. Show him we can play nice too."

His commandos lowered their weapons. Samuel looked at the raider. "Go on, now. You and your men. We're going to let you walk right on by."

"Tell them to put their weapons down."

Samuel nodded at his commandos, and they placed their weapons on the floor.

"Tell them to sit down."

Again, they did so.

"We'll bring our hostages out with us. When we're past you…when we're outside—then we'll let them go."

"Perfectly reasonable."

The raider looked at the commandos, at Samuel, and at his men. He went back and grabbed his hostage and led his two men outside, all three holding their human shields with pistols to their heads all the way. They carried the hostages past the commandos and toward the exit. Samuel walked with them, his hands held high, his fingers touching his helmet. As soon as they were out of sight, he quietly ordered his commandos to stay back and to start getting to work on the door to the fallout shelter.

"Stop following us," the raider said.

"I have to see what you're doing," Samuel said. "I'm unarmed. I'm at your mercy."

"Fine. But stay in front of us. No sudden moves."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

They got outside, and stood out in the open surrounded by masses of dead raiders, dead Scouts, dead slaves. The raider leader looked at Samuel.

"Nobody else around, as you can see," Samuel said.

"We'll take them just as far as the edge of the city. Then when we're sure you're not following us…then we'll let them go."

Samuel gave him a long, hard look. "You can take one."

"We can kill all three here, and you, and make a run for it."

"My men run faster than you do. They will be very mean to you."

The raider hesitated. Samuel pointed at his hostage. "That one. Take her. She's a sergeant. The other two, cadets. And well…one is wounded in the leg. How far do you think he'll get? Take your most valuable hostage and move on. I have to get to work on that door. Kango's waiting for me."

The raider thought for a moment and nodded to his associates. They released their hostages. Samuel gestured for them to go inside, and they stumbled in, still tied and gagged. The two associates trained their guns on Samuel. The raider leader stepped backward with his pistol to his hostage's head, keeping the female, red-haired Scout between himself and Samuel. There was fear in her eyes, but also trust.

"Bye now," Samuel said.

The raider leader backed away to the edge of the clearing. His two associates stood training their weapons on Samuel and then began stepping back.

"Crocket," Samuel whispered.

"I got him."

"Don't miss this time."

A sharp buzzing sound zipped through the air. The raider leader's head snapped forward with the sound of a wet thud. The two remaining raiders looked back in time to see him crumble like a ragdoll at the hostage's feet. When they looked back at Samuel he brought his .45 up to head level, his thumb crunching down the safety. The pistol fired so quickly that his first two shots sounded like one—both hit the first raider in the sternum so closely grouped that both holes could be covered with a bottle cap. Samuel pivoted. The second raider snapped off a shot, missed. Samuel snapped off three just as fast. Two into the sternum—his front sight barely moved. One into the brain.

The pair of them crumpled into a single heap, one on top of the other. The one at the bottom let out a wet cough, aspirating blood. He twitched for a moment and lay still. Samuel stepped forward over him and went to the hostage. The leader of the three lay in a pool of blood at her feet, chest down, his head bent at an odd angle. He was breathing.

"Can't move," he said. "Can't feel nothing. Do it. Finish what you—"

Samuel shot him in the head. Reloaded the .45 with a fresh magazine, flicked on the safety, slid it back into its holster. He drew a trench knife with a double edged blade and a brass handle incorporating a skull crusher pommel and a knuckle duster finger guard. He sawed through the rope holding her gag in place and then through the ropes binding her arms. She turned to face him with tears in her eyes.

She was young, and, he could tell, inexperienced. There was blood on her—someone else's, probably from several different people. He took his helmet and mask off, and she buried her face in his chest. He wanted to comfort her, apologize for the mess he'd made, for ordering her into a battle she wasn't ready for.

Instead, wearily, he said, "Straighten up, soldier."

She broke away, wiped away her tears, stood straight. "Yes sir. Sorry sir. What are my orders?"

Samuel looked back toward the entrance to the fire house. Knowles stood there watching him, the other two Scouts freed of their bonds and standing with her.

"Your remaining men are in an alley around that building with the surviving refugees. See to their needs, and the refugees'. When you're ready, see to organizing the dead. Salvage anything of use that you can. Get your men and the refugees ready to travel back to the nearest base."

She flashed a salute. "Right away, Major."

The three Scouts carried each other off. Knowles appeared next to him. She'd removed her helmet as well. She was also young, but not in the eyes, where it counted. Still, attractive—certainly very fit. Curly black hair tied back in a ponytail. Dark skin—not as dark as Samuel's, probably closer to white. They both had their share of scars. "You all right, Major?"

Samuel Greene was a tall, fit, black male in his late thirties. His head was shaved. A jagged scar ran the length of his face, and he had hard, determined eyes. Women had always told him he was handsome when he smiled. "Tired, sore. Satisfied with my commandos' performance." Not so much mine, he thought. "I've told you what will make me all right."

An explosion seemed to shake the earth beneath their feet and a fresh wave of dust drifted out of the entrance to the fire house as well as its upper floor windows. Samuel replaced his helmet. Knowles did the same. She handed him his big 12.7mm carbine and his bigger 40mm launcher. He checked both and they ran inside.

His commandos were lined up on both sides of the hallway with weapons ready, waiting for him to lead them. Knowles went to the front of the line. He went a step past her, determined to have the first chance at Kango. He went through the blasted remains of the doorframe and down the steps into the ancient darkness of the fallout shelter. He activated the low light optics built into his mask, and a bright green light filled in the dark spaces of his vision. He walked slowly through the shelter, scanning with his carbine, his commandos coming in behind him and spreading out.

There was a blood trail on the floor. "I knew Crocket never misses," Danziger said.

Samuel followed the trail of blood. He found a cabinet pulled open and a load of blankets pulled out—one blanket soaked with blood, another shredded apart. The trail ended there. He moved on. The fallout shelter seemed to go on forever—well beyond underneath the fire station. Soon he came to the end, and found another flight of stairs. "No…" he said. "No, no, no."

He dashed up the stairs, cursing loudly. As he climbed the stairs daylight scorched his low light vision. He swore and switched it off and ran up the stairs, kicking open another steel fallout shelter door, and emerged among the crumbling ruins of another building far away from the fire station. "Damn it," he said. "God damn it."

He tore off his helmet and ran to the top of a pile of rubble and rotated fully around, searching in every direction for any sign of his quarry. He yelled out across the ruined city as loudly as he could. "Kango, you mother fucker! I'm going to find you! You hear me? I'm going to find you, and I'm going to make you cry like the sad little bitch that you are. Do you hear me, you weak mother fucker?"

He fired his rifle into the air, into the ground, into the piles of rubble and crumbling buildings all around him, until his big 12.7 clicked empty.

"Major," Knowles said. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Ow, god damn it." He pushed her hand away.

"I'm sorry, sir. I forgot. You should get a medic to look—"

"Johnston, get on your radio. Have them mobilize every team we have in the area. I'm going after that son of a bitch. Crocket, you still back there? Get those refugees together. I want to talk to them." Samuel headed back to the fire station through the shelter. Crocket and the remaining Scouts and the refugees all stood in the center of the clearing. An old man among the refugees stepped forward and seized Samuel as he approached.

"You…you are him, are you not? Samuel Greene himself, in the flesh. I must tell you, I have heard so much, I can hardly—"

"Kango," Samuel said. "I want to know everything. Where he operates from, how many men he has, who are his allies and where I can find them."

"Yes, certainly…"

Samuel looked at the headless bodies of his Scouts on the ground. The other Scouts stood around, lamenting them. "What are you looking at?" Samuel said. "There are blankets in the shelter below. Wrap them up. We need to get them back to their families. Move it."

The old man looked at him sadly. "I cannot tell you how grateful we are that you came to our aid, or how sorry I am for the loss of your men. I don't know how we could ever repay you."

Samuel knelt down and picked up one of the raider's rifles. He checked it over and handed it to the old man, who looked at it like something completely alien to him. "You don't have to repay me," Samuel said. "You're replacing them."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Nobody Escapes

**A Peaceful Gathering – Al Steps Out – Thunder over the Mountain – A Shocking Reply – Rubber Bullets – Dog Collars – The Dog that Bites – Don't Lose your Head – Every God Damned Volt – Look Ma… – The Seeder's Code – Slipping their Collars **

In an ancient wilderness far removed from any sign of civilization or society a still lake surrounded by green spruce rested between rocky mountain ranges. On the shore of the partially frozen lake, several large fires had been built and twenty-two individuals gathered around them and huddled together for warmth. Their conical tents stood in rows by the nearby tree line. They sat in groups of two or three sharing blankets, most with arms entwined and heads on one another's shoulders. They wore decoratively patterned clothing made of knitted natural fibers and wore long hair tied in decorative braids. Many wore flowers in their braids. One aged man sat strumming a mandolin while a young woman at his side played a haunting melody on a woodlands tribal flute—both took turns singing, their voices carrying far across the still waters and distant mountains. They called themselves the Seeders.

One of the Seeders sat sandwiched between and under the embrace of a young blonde haired young man named Elijah and a fair young tribal woman with flowers in her hair named Aponi. They rested with their heads on his broad shoulders and eyes closed, pulling a thick homemade blanket around themselves so that the ends met in front of him. Over the sound of the music and soft humming of his companions he heard a sound coming from the nearby trees and turned his head sharply. Aponi moaned in protest. "Sit still, Al."

Al sat listening for a moment and then forced the ends of the blanket apart and stood. Elijah and Aponi complained at him and wrapped each other together in their blanket. Al stood in the glow of the fire turning his head and watching in all directions. Aponi snuggled into Elijah and closed her eyes. Elijah watched him.

"What's the matter, Al? Come back down. It's too cold."

Al wore pants and moccasins made from sewn animal furs and a decorative knitted poncho. His chest was bare beneath the poncho and his breath was frosty white in the cold air. He turned and sprinted off into the darkness.

"Al?" Elijah called. "Al, where are you going? Come back."

He was gone.

Elijah looked back at the fire. He rested his head on the top of Aponi's, closed his eyes, and began to drift off to sleep.

A sharp howl like the sound of a crazed animal but voiced by a human throat rose from beyond the trees. The gathered Seeders' eyes shot open and they rose looking about frantically for its source.

"What was that?" Elijah said.

Aponi started to pull him along. "Run, run! We have to—

Figures clad in tattered black rags and bits of jagged metal armor—wearing gruesome metal masks and cruel embellishments such as barbed wire wrapped around their own bodies and cutting into their own skin—came running out of the forest from every direction, surrounding them in moments. They howled crazed sounds like a pack of wild animals and dashed about in a circle around them.

Elijah pushed Aponi back behind himself and backed up, keeping her behind himself, as the wild men advanced, pushing his people together into a huddle and pushing them back toward the icy cold surface of the water.

"Do not let them touch you with their spears," Aponi said behind him. They carried long spears ending not in sharp points but with spring-like coils with black cables looping around the shafts all down their lengths and attaching to their bodies. They held the ends out toward the Seeders as they stepped forward.

"Who are they?" Elijah said.

"Storm Wielders, from beyond the mountains to the west. They worship pain."

The old man put down his guitar and stepped forward out of the huddle of men with his hands raised. "Please, please. We mean no harm. We are simple people. We will not resist. What is ours you may—"

"No, Gregor, stay back!" Aponi yelled. "They will not—"

As Gregor stepped forward, one of the Thunder Wielders thrust the end of his spear into the old man's chest. It did not pierce him. Rather, it shot white hot sparks in all directions. The old man went into a furious spasm and fell to the ground twitching and writhing as smoke rose from a smoldering hole scorched into his poncho. The Storm Wielders hooted and laughed. Then they advanced, pushing the people back into the water. The thin layer of sharp ice on the surface broke beneath their feet and they stood up to their waists with the sharp pieces of ice cutting into their legs.

"That's far enough," a voice called. A man dressed in a long leather coat with a fur collar walked to the front of the crowd—bald, with gold teeth, a long mustache, and large vertical scar over one dead white eye. Rather than a spear, like the Thunder Wielders, he carried a prewar shotgun cut down to pistol size. Four other men walked around him, dressed in leather coats and leather helmets with built in goggles. They also carried shotguns.

"Take it easy, you bunch of fucking savages. We don't want to drown them, now." The bald man went to the elder Gregor and looked down at him. He'd stopped twitching and lay still. The bald man reached down and felt his neck and then put an ear to his mouth. He stopped and pointed his shotgun with one hand at the Thunder Wielder who had shocked the old man and fired. The blast hurled the Thunder Wielder backward off his feet with a boom that echoed all through the mountainside.

"You stupid fucking savage. What did I tell you? Not in the fucking chest! You're lucky you didn't stop another one's heart."

Amazingly, the blasted Thunder Wielder stood, holding his chest where he'd been shot, winded but no worse for wear. The rest of the tribesmen laughed and hollered.

"You're lucky he's an old one. Ain't worth too much anyhow." The bald man stepped over the elder and went to the edge of the water and observed them gripping each other and watching him wide-eyed, trembling from the cold and their fear. He stroked his mustache. "Well if this isn't a hell of a catch. Got to be twenty dogs here. Not a one of them armed. Not a one sick. This must be my lucky god damned day."

"Who are you? What do you want?" Elijah said. "We're just simple travelers. We don't want any trouble."

The bald man laughed. "Well, how about that. They can already speak, too. That much the better, huh?" His four bodyguards laughed. He looked back at Elijah. "The name is Haddox. And there's just one thing I want."

"Fine. Take it. Take it all. We have some valuables—back there, in the tents. Food, clothing…some scavenged old world goods. Some of it is valuable. You can take it all. Just leave us alone."

"Is that so?" Haddox said. He nodded at his men. "You two—take a couple of the savages and see if there's anything good in there." Two of the men with shotguns and two of the Thunder Wielders broke off and ran up the hillside toward the tents near the tree line. The rest of the Thunder Wielders spread out their formation to fill the gap.

"All right, let's get you lot out of the water before you freeze to death," the bald man said. He point at the nearest Seeder, a teenaged native boy named Dani. "You first. Come on out of there. No, no. One at a time. There we go."

Dani stepped forward slowly onto dry land. A Thunder Wielder immediately hit him from behind in the small of the back with the butt of his spear. The boy cried out in agony and fell to his knees.

"Take it easy with the fucking merchandise!" Haddox yelled. He pointed his shotgun, and the Thunder Wielder shrank away. "All right, boys."

His remaining two guards stepped forward and locked a metallic collar covered in strange wiring around the boy's neck and then pulled him to his feet and stood him in front of Haddox. Haddox looked him up and down. "Oh, this one is gonna fetch top dollar." He took a device like a remote control from his belt and pointed it at the boy. "Now let's see here. Testing, testing. One, two…" On three, he pushed a button and the boy fell to the ground screaming in agony and convulsing on the ground, clawing at the metal collar as though it burned like fire. The Thunder Wielders standing all around cheered and hooted and raised their spears to the air.

"Go sit him near the fire, boys. Won't be any good to me with frostbite on all his toes."

The two bodyguards dragged the boy out of the way and Haddox pointed to the next Seeder. "Next up. Come on, then."

The Seeder stepped back, shaking his head—but with the freezing water and the cage of ice, he had nowhere else to go. Haddox rolled his eyes and pointed his shotgun. "This is only loaded with rubber. It won't kill you, but it will sure hurt like hell. You really gonna make me do that?"

The man finally stepped forward. Haddox's guards secured another collar around his neck. Haddox stepped forward smiling and hit the man in the stomach with front of his shotgun. The Seeder doubled over. Haddox pressed the button on his remote and the man thrashed wildly on the ground screaming and moaning until he exhausted himself. Haddox kicked him once more for good measure.

"Are you lot listening to me? I said there is only one small thing I want from you: _obedience._ Just give me that, and we'll have no problems. Are we clear?"

He pointed at Elijah. "You. Let's move this along."

Elijah stepped forward. Aponi tried to hold him back. He fought free and went onto the shore. He kept his eyes down at the ground. He understood now. He knew what to do.

Haddox nodded and smiled. "Now that's more like it."

The guards fastened another collar around Elijah's neck. It felt cold and sharp—small wires stabbing his skin, painful even without being activated.

"Aye, you're a pretty one," Haddox said. "I'm gonna get top dollar for your hide." He pushed up under Elijah's chin and forced his eyes up. His breath stank of bad alcohol and rot. "Or maybe…I might not need to, after all. You see this?" He showed Elijah the remote control. "You don't ever necessary need feel what happens when I push this. You understand?"

Elijah looked into his eyes, at the hungry look there. He couldn't help the look that came into his own. Haddox's face darkened. His thumb began to close around the button on the remote control.

Somewhere far in the distance, and man's voice screamed, terrified, "No! No! Please stop! Don't, please—"

A horrible scream echoed through the mountains—repeating itself no fewer than three times before fading into the cold night. The first and loudest iteration seemed to come from the direction of the tents and the wood line. Haddox turned away from Elijah and looked across the mists toward the tents.

"Well, well. Looks like there's even more dogs here to play with." He laughed and turned back to Elijah. "How many more of you are there, boy?"

Elijah didn't answer. Haddox held the remote in his face, played with his thumb around the button, and made a clicking sound.

"One," Elijah said. "Just one."

Again, he couldn't help it—the twitch at the side of his mouth as a smile tried to form. Haddox saw it. He peered at Elijah, wondering if he'd just imagined it. One of his men grunted and Haddox turned again toward the tents.

A man came running from beyond the tents and down the slope toward them—running awkward and unbalanced, his limbs flailing at his sides. It was one of Haddox's men. Before he reached his companions, he slowed to a stop and stood in place, staring at and past them.

"Ey, Zed? What's up?" Haddox called.

Zed fell to his knees, teetered for a moment, and then fell flat on his face. The broad feathered shaft of an arrow protruded from the back of his neck.

"What in the fu…" Haddox said.

Another man stepped into the light from beyond the tents. He stood well over six feet tall, his long black hair and his bloodstained poncho wafting in the cold wind—the front of the poncho flung over his back to reveal a bare chest covered in tribal tattoos, deep scars, and muscles as sharply defined as the mountains themselves. A long, curved blade was tucked into the front of his belt, oozing blood. In his hands he held a wooden bow nearly as long as himself. Elijah took a breath. _Al…_

Haddox's face showed a twisted sort of joy. "Mother of god. Would you look at the size of that one." He turned to his men and pointed two fingers at the row of Thunder Wielders. "You two, you two, and you two. Put a collar on that magnificent dog. I want him alive."

The Thunder Wielders turned their spears away from the Seeders and toward Al and began to gallop toward him. Al notched another arrow to his bow. They stopped, looked at each other, and ran forward at an increased speed, hooting and hollering like wild beasts. Al let another arrow go and it buried itself in the nearest Thunder Wielder's skull. The Thunder Wielder actually continued to run for some distance before falling and getting trampled underfoot by his tribesmen. Before Al could notch another arrow, the rest were on him.

One ran ahead of the rest, the end of his spear held far ahead of him. Al danced backward. He swung his bow like a staff and deflected the first thrust and also snagged the bowstring around the electric coil on the end. He turned the head of the spear away from himself and moved in past it. His long kukri sword appeared in his hand and swiped the air. The Thunder Wielder spun around in place and stood dazedly for a moment while a cascade of viscera poured out around his feet.

Three more Thunder Wielders reached him. Al grabbed the emboweled man around the neck and held him as a shield. The heads of three spears impacted against the man's chest. Under the combined assault of three electric spear heads, the dying man thrashed wildly, emitting smoke and sparks, and his clothing erupted into flames. Al let the burning man fall to the ground, and with one swing of his sword swept aside the three spear heads—sending out a shower of sparks—and moved in. He closed the distance to the next Thunder Wielder and cleaved his head from his shoulders with another slash of his sword. He kicked the headless body in the chest before it could fall and it fell onto the spear of a final Thunder Wielder coming up and knocked them both back down the hillside.

Haddox's mouth hung open in surprise. "Now _that_ is a dog. You boys got your scatterguns loaded with rubber, right?"

The other two Thunder Wielders attempted to bring the ends of their spears around. Al ducked low under their spears and darted inward, filling the space. He swung his kukri and severed one's leg at the knee—he fell screaming onto his back. Al rose up under the spear of the other and lifted him clear off the ground, skewering him between the ribs and straight out his back. He let the body crumple to the ground. The final Thunder Wielder worked his spear head free of the headless body and pointed it at Al and started stepping back as Al started stepping forward. The Thunder Wielder began to chant something as he backed away. He thrust his spear. Al's kukri flashed. The head of the spear went sailing away. Al lunged forward and swung his kukri in a downward stroke—the blade cleaved a line through the tribal that started between his neck and shoulder and stopped just short of his navel. Al let the cleaved man's body fall to the ground. He stood, soaked with blood, and stared at Haddox.

"All right, boys," Haddox said. "Go put a collar on him."

"Boss, I don't…"

"You have _guns_, you morons. He doesn't."

"Can't I use the real shells? He just wasted half of our—"

"That guy's worth a hundred zapper-heads. And a hundred of you. Now go fucking get him, or I'll put collars on you instead."

The two guards cocked their shotguns and stepped forward.

"Al, run!" Elijah yelled. Haddox hit him in the side of the head with his shotgun, knocking him down. Al ran, but not away. He ran toward the two guards. They brought up their shotguns and fired. Al didn't even slow down. He got closer. They fired again. He stumbled, moved closer still. They fired again, and again, and again. At ten yards away, he finally fell—crumpled into a heap. They fired their shotguns into him until he lay still.

"Enough!" Maddox yelled. "Don't cripple him. Use the zappers."

The two guards looked at each other. One reloaded his shotgun. The other set his down and pulled a pistol shaped weapon from his belt—oddly shaped, and painted yellow with red symbols in the shapes of lightning bolts.

Al rose. His kukri flashed—away from him, out of his hand and through the air. The blade embedded itself in the skull of guard still holding his shotgun. His shotgun discharged off into space, and he sank slowly and fell to a sitting position and didn't move.

Al moved as soon as the blade left his hand toward the other guard. The guard fired his weapon, and a barbed dart on the end of a metal wire struck Al in the sternum and stayed there, the metal wire hanging in air behind it, still attached to the gun. Al ran forward, disregarding the dart, until a chattering electrical sound rang out and he slowed nearly to a stop. Every one of Al's huge muscles tensed like granite as if under incredible strain—thick ropy veins bulging out of his skin all over his body—on his neck, on his face. He stopped only for a moment, and then began to walk forward, reaching out with bare hands toward the guard ten feet in front of him.

"Hit him, damn it!" Hoddax called.

"I'm giving him every god damned volt. He's not stopping. Oh shi—"

Al closed the distance, seized the man around the neck with his hands…and broke him. Just broke him. The sickening crunch echoed across the still waters. Al let the man fall to the ground. He turned again and looked at Haddox. He held eye contact as he went to the sitting man and pulled the kukri out of his skull.

Haddox looked at his four remaining Thunder Wielders. "What are you standing around for? Get him!"

The Thunder Wielders turned their spears away from the Seeders and ran—but not toward Al. They ran around him, giving a wide berth, and made for the forest.

"Oh, you cowardly savages," Haddox shouted. He looked back to see Al advancing toward him. Frantically, he shucked his shotgun twice, ejecting live rounds, and pointed it at Al. "Wait, wait, wait. You don't want to do that. I always keep at least one of the real rounds in this thing, and you're about to swallow it. And this, this right here…?"

He held up the remote control for Al to see. "See this button? It shocks them. Makes them scream a little. But you see this other one, with the glass cover I just removed? That one turns the collars into fucking bombs. You understand what I'm saying? If I push this button, all your friends I've put collars on already? I will launch their fucking heads into orbit."

Al stopped.

"That's right. That's right." Haddox pulled Elijah to his feet and held him between himself and Al. He began to walk in the same direction as his men had fled. "You win, all right? You're a real champ. But I'm not dying here. I'm going to go right back the way I came, and we can all go back to our usual—"

Al took a step forward.

"No, no, no, no. Are you listening to me?" He held out the remote for Al to see. "What about this isn't getting through to—"

Al threw his blade. It swished through the air just past Elijah's ear and sailed into the night. At first, it appeared that he had simply thrown it away. Haddox stared blankly at bleeding stump of his wrist where his hand had been. His hand fell to the ground, fingers still wrapped tightly around the remote control.

"Well that's a hell of a…" Haddox pushed Elijah aside and brought up his shotgun. Al snatched it out of his hand faster than his eyes could follow. Haddox stared at him blankly for a moment. He turned around in a circle, searching along the ground—found his hand at his feet. He bent over and reached for it. Al pointed the shotgun and fired.

Haddox stood back up and stared at his remaining hand, or what was left of it. The blast had blown off nearly everything but the thumb. He found, to his surprise, that the thumb still actually worked. "Oh," he said. He fell to his knees. Al pumped the shotgun, set the muzzle against Haddox's forehead.

"Who are you?" Haddox said.

"Where you're from, they call me Alcatraz," Al said.

"Oh," Haddox said. "That explains a lot."

Alcatraz pulled the trigger. The shotgun clicked.

Haddox chuckled. "Only keep one real round in there."

Alcatraz tossed the shotgun aside and put his hands around the slaver's neck. Haddox closed his eyes.

"No!" a voice cried. The elder, Gregor, had regained consciousness. "Al, my son. Don't kill him. Remember, that's not our way. We don't kill. It is the code we live by."

"Little late for that," Alcatraz said.

"It's never too late for that," Gregor said. "That is also our code. If you kill the last one—then, it is too late."

"He'll come back. Or someone else, in his place."

"Then we will leave before he does. Nothing ties us to this spot. That is our way."

Alcatraz hesitated. Haddox slowly opened his eyes.

"Al," Elijah said.

Al looked at the young man laying, bleeding on the ground, at the collar around his neck. He blinked. He let go of the slaver and went to him.

The Seeders ran out of the freezing waters to the fires, grabbing up their blankets. They crowded around the Seeders still wearing collars. Al knelt down beside Elijah. He reached for the collar around his neck to unfasten it.

"No!" Elijah yelled. He pushed Al's hands away. "No, everyone, stop. Don't touch the collars. For god's sake, stay away from them. They're rigged to explode if you try."

The Seeders drew back from the ones wearing collars. Except for Al—he moved closer to Elijah and held the boy's hands in his. "What do I do?" he said. "I don't know what to do."

"Nothing, Al. It's okay. I can handle it. Breathe. Aponi…"

Aponi appeared at Al's side. "I'm here."

"Go get my box of tools from the tent. And a mirror. And my flashlight."

"I will go." Aponi ran off in the direction of the tents.

Elijah looked at Al. Al's hands were shaking. "Relax, Al. I didn't worry for a minute when it was up to you. You can do me the same courtesy."

Al nodded.

Aponi returned with Elijah's tools, a mirror, and a flashlight. He opened the toolbox and took from it a number of tools in both hands. "Okay, Aponi. I need you to hold that mirror just right there, so I can see. And Al…the light. Shine the light right here. Okay, don't move."

A few agonizing minutes later, Elijah removed the collar and Al threw it far out across the lake. Elijah and Aponi ran to the other Seeders and soon removed their collars as well. Al threw them far out into the lake with the first.

A scream of pain turned their heads. Haddox had plunged his bleeding wrists into the hot coals of the fire—letting out a sizzling sound and a cloud of awful stink. He rose from the flames laughing, laughing, laughing as he turned and fled into the night. His laughter continued to echo across the distant mountains long after he had vanished from sight.

The Seeders stood silent in the darkness—staring at the dismembered dead lying all about, and at Al and the blood that covered him. "A terrible thing has happened here tonight," Gregor said. "This is not our way. To respond this way…will only invite further bloodshed. We have to leave this place now. We will bury these men, and we will leave as soon as the sun rises. Let us sleep, now. If we can."

The Seeders wandered slowly away from the fires toward the tents.

"They won't like what they find up there," Al said. "I may have…"

"Shh," Aponi said. "You saved us. Again."

Elijah nodded. "No matter what they say."

Aponi helped Al out of his blood-soaked poncho and washed him with a wet cloth as he sat quietly beside the fire. She carefully removed the barbed darts from his skin and threw them away. She held bits of ice from the lake against the black and purple, bloody bruises that covered his body. Elijah came to sit beside him and sat with an arm around his shoulders. Aponi pulled their blanket back around them all and they sat that way for the remainder of the night.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: What Lurks in your Shadow

**Rise and Shine – The Ordnance Ordinance – Old Friends – Not What You Think – Hatchett's Workshop – Call the Doc – A Handy Job – Dinner at the Station – Remembering Old Times – The Right Kind of Eyes – Visiting Hours – Treating the Patient with Breakfast – Another Attack**

Hatchett awoke as the sun rose, and the town's bell signaled the beginning of the work day for the townsfolk. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

He woke again sometime after noon and he groaned and rose and dressed himself in a pair of black twill pants and a cotton shirt open at collar and a vest on which he could pin his badge. He checked his two revolvers were safety loaded with five rounds apiece with empty chambers under their hammers and he slipped them into their holsters and went downstairs. One of his deputies—Coleman—sat reading a newspaper with his feet on the desk. He lowered them to the floor as Hatchett entered. The prisoners were in their cell—Langy lying on the bed with his eyes wrapped in bandages still humming tuneless noises to see if he could hear himself yet. The other prisoner gave Hatchett a sour look as he peered in.

"Problems?" Hatchett said.

"No problems, boss," said the deputy. Coleman.

"That a fresh paper?"

"Sure is."

"A fresh paper addressed to the sheriff?"

The deputy looked up over the top of the paper and frowned. He folded the paper and laid it on the desk. Hatchett took it and put it under his arm. "Breaking for brunch," he said.

He put on his hat and went onto the porch and scanned the street. Townsfolk about their general business. Another quiet day. He waited for a Brahmin-pulled cart to pass and crossed to the diner across the street.

He sat down at his booth facing all windows and entrances. He put on his reading glasses and started to unfold his paper when the waitress came. Sandy haired girl with freckles all over. Name was Sandy, in fact. He asked for the usual.

"Salisbury steak sandwich?"

"The usual _breakfast_."

"We stopped serving breakfast near three hours ago, Sheriff."

Hatchett looked at her over the top of his spectacles.

"Right with you, Sheriff."

The waitress returned with beans and grits and corned beef and a glass of juice and a glass of beer and a single raw egg. "Ain't it nice to hear, Sheriff?"

"What's that?"

"Why, the latest of Mister Major Greene. It's right there on the front page."

Hatchett had gone straight into the weather and classifieds. He turned the paper over and saw a picture of Samuel Greene in full battle garb. Dead raiders. Freed slaves. The Major still up to his old game, giving the bad guys a hard time. Repelled an assault by the infamous bandit Kango Harton, the headline read.

"Don't that make you happy, Sheriff?"

Hatchett picked up the egg and broke it into the glass of beer and guzzled it in one draw while he looked the story over. He set the empty down and picked up the juice. He sipped the juice. "Yeah, I reckon."

"He's a great man, that Samuel Greene."

"You figure?"

"I figure and I reckon."

Hatchett sipped his juice.

"So handsome too. Such a shame we don't see him around these parts any more. Don't you reckon that too, Sheriff?"

"No, I can't say I do reckon that."

She put her hands on her hips. "Aw, Sheriff…"

"I'll continue to like what he's doing, so long as he's doing it just that far away from here. Now get along. Don't want to hear no more about him. Least of all over breakfast."

"Well, can I at least have that page, if you're finished with it?"

"What for?"

"For his picture."

Hatchett shook his head and gestured for her to help herself. She did and headed off to show the other pretty waitresses. The Major always had that quality—stirring up trouble any way he could, not least of all with ladies. Hatchett nibbled at his toast and went back into the classifieds. With any luck, somebody out there had a well pump head for sale to replace his leaky one.

Halfway through his brunch, a couple more of his deputies entered—Coleman and that squat fella, Maury. They had their shotguns in hand and looked less than at ease. All the customers stopped eating and talking and turned to look at them and then at Hatchett. Hatchett tried to eat faster before they got to him, but they came in a hurry.

"We may have a situation, Sheriff," said Coleman.

"You don't say."

They looked at each other. "Someone disobeying the local ordinance, Sheriff."

"The ordnance ordinance."

"Yes sir. That one."

The sign at the front entrance of the town warned all travelers to lock up their firearms at the gate. Also disallowed possession of explosives and radioactive materials. First offenses got a warning. Second a hefty fine. Third something cruel and unusual.

"That's nothing new."

"I never seen anything like this guy, Sheriff," said Maury. "Damned if he ain't broke the rule but at least fifteen times over all at once, and I can tell that just from a look at him. Walked right by the sign, acted like he didn't hear the front gate man when he gave him the warning."

"Front gate man's supposed to make it damn clear he's been heard."

"You ain't _seen_ this guy, Sheriff."

Hatchett got the feeling it was Maury had front gate duty that morning.

"He's got a telescope on a rifle bigger than any I ever saw strapped to his back. Another hanging down in front—look like one of them miniature machineguns—with a god damn silencer on it. Body armor like the kind we can't even get out here. Belts and straps all over with ammunition. I swear I saw grenades, and not the homemade kind neither."

Hatchett gnawed at his toast.

"It's more than that, Sheriff. He got a girl with him," Coleman said. "And she got her hands tied in front. And he is pulling her by them like a dog on a leash."

Hatchett didn't like the taste of that at all. "You mean a slaver? Come in here? Flaunting it? Can't scarcely fathom anyone being that stupid."

"That's why we figured we'd better wait for you, so you could make him smarter."

"Hell…all right." Hatchett stood up. "Show me.

They led him down the street toward the saloon. All the traffic had stopped and all folks and storekeepers stood in the doorways watching out looking like they'd seen the devil himself stroll down main street. More deputies joined up and walked with them.

One of them said "He's taken a room up top the saloon, Sheriff."

Half the rooms up top the saloon had glass windows overlooking the streets below. Hatchett didn't see anything through them—about all he could see was the sun's glint. "So he's probably looking down at us from a window, then?"

The deputies looked at each other. Hatchett moved to the side street under the store awnings and they hurried into a line behind him. When they got to the saloon, deputies had already taken positions at all entrances. They had their revolvers or shotguns in hand and ready and were none too discreet about it.

Marion leaned in the shade against the side of the saloon beside the swinging doors. He wore a sweat-soaked sleeveless shirt and jeans and looked at Hatchett over the top of mirrored sunglasses. They looked at each other and then both peered inside. The saloon patrons had all cleared out, most likely without needing to be told. Only the bartender stayed behind. She shot Hatchett a glance from far off and went back to polishing shot glasses.

"You get a look at him?" Hatchett said.

"From a ways away," Marion said. "I was on top of my sister's place, helping the brother in law fix the damned roof."

"Surprised you came in on your day off."

"Hell, any excuse to get out of work." Marion fanned himself with his hat. "And he did command attention. I'll give him that."

A boy ran up with Marion's service revolver and holster wrapped in its gunbelt. Marion strapped it on. The boy offered Hatchett his big .45-70 and Hatchett told him to go put it back where he'd found it.

"Can't figure," Hatchett said. "What is this fella, drunk? Stoned? Both?"

"That, or he's got just about a pair of ten megaton sized cajones," Marion said.

Hatchett looked around, and could see just about the whole town looking back on, expecting a show. "Well damn it all."

He went in. Marion followed. They kept their guns holstered, though just about every fool coming in behind them had theirs bared and looked ready for war. They spread out and moved to cover the stairs. Hatchett and Marion went to the bar.

The bar belonged to just about the toughest but somehow loveliest senorita Hatchett had ever laid eyes on. Elita looked twofold sour, and he didn't blame her—all the business chased out of her bar, and now a bunch of trigger happy hicks come to pluck bullet holes into anything and everything she owned.

But mostly, it seemed, she was mad about "That cocksucker coming in here pulling around that girl like a steer by the reigns." She slammed the glass down on the counter so hard it cracked. "And he comes right up and says 'give me a room.' I have half a mind to pull the shotgun right there and give him both barrels."

"I thank you for not, Elita. As I say, best to leave that dirty business to the dirty old man. I won't make you, but I'll ask you to go wait outside. We'll be out soon as we can, and we won't make a mess."

"To hell with my saloon. You promise me that girl come to no harm."

"That, I'll promise."

He tried to give her a convincing smile. Out of nowhere, he got one back. Damnation, she was alluring.

"Go then. Quickly. God know what he doing up there. I gave him the last room. At the very end of the hall."

"Thank you, darling."

Hatchett started up the stairs, his hand on the handle of his strong side .44. Marion and the rest followed after him. He heard her muttering on the way out—"Should have made him taste buckshot, right through that mask of his."

Hatchett looked at Marion as they walked. "Mask?"

"He's got a black mask over the upper half of his face. These weird eye holes looking like binocular lenses. Like, I dunno…a metal skull or something."

Hatchett stopped in his tracks halfway down the hallway and the train piled up behind him, nearly pushing him over. "Oh, hell and damnation."

"What's that?" Marion said.

Hatchett turned around and looked at them all, them looking back at him, guns out, ready to jump out of their skin. "I'd say all you boys can go on home."

They all looked at each other and back at him. "What?" Coleman said.

"I mean get on out of here. The boy cried wolf. Go home."

He turned around and went on, shaking his head, leaving them to question and mutter to one another in a pile. Marion followed after him regardless.

"You, I'd tell to get down to the bath house."

"What's going on, Sheriff? You sure about this?"

"Yeah, I reckon." He paused before knocking on the door at the end of the hallway. "Well. Mostly."

Marion glared at him and put his hand on his revolver. Hatchett did the same and he knocked twice.

"The door is unlocked," a voice called through it.

The voice had an unsettling accent to it—no, perhaps not an accent. It sounded like the voice a computer Hatchett had once come across had used, compressed and uncanny—just slightly off and with an unsettling electronic crackle behind it. Hatchett sighed. "Yeah, Marion. I'm sure." He pushed the door open.

Dutch sat by the window in a rocking chair. He looked different than Hatchett remembered—worn out, as though dragged down the proverbial forty miles of bad road and back again. The metal that covered all of his face but his mouth and chin and one stubble-covered cheek had lost its glossy black finish and had gained more than a few dents and scratches. His hair, once neatly buzzed, grew nearly to his shoulders, filthy and matted. He still wore his same beaten black biker jacket with its "Riders of the Apocalypse" insignia over his high-tech stealth armor suit, now spotted with all manner of rips and scorch marks and bullet indentations, with duct tape holding it all together in places.

His blank metal face—Marion had not been the first to note its similarity to skull—turned to look at Hatchett and the servos around his mechanical eyes hummed and ticked faintly in that odd way they did as they focused on his face.

"My friend," Dutch said. He smiled.

He cradled a compact black submachine gun with a red laser sight in his lap and an enormous rifle leaned against the wall beside him. A young woman sat at the edge of the bed staring at Hatchett's feet. Her wrists were tied together and then tied to the bedpost. She looked dirty and exhausted, and more angry than afraid. Hatchett looked back at Dutch with the coldest stare he could muster. Dutch's smile faded.

"You don't look pleased to see me, Hatchett."

"I ain't."

"Unexpected. I recall us parting on good terms. My tenuous recollection, at least."

"Emphasis. '_Parted_.' " Hatchett looked back outside. Marion had moved on. "If this ain't the damnedest fool way to schedule a meet up."

"I planned to leave a message with the saloon keeper. Hers was a cold reception. Whole town much the same."

He laughed. Hatchett remembered that laugh. Whatever machine replaced his natural voice box handled most words all right—if, occasionally, missing which syllable to put a stress or emphasis to. Laughter, though. No matter what kind Dutch intended, uproarious or a chuckle—it was the same slow, verbalized "Ha Ha Ha" every time. It tended to sound sarcastic, and tended to annoy most folks, intended to or not.

Hatchett leaned against the side of the doorway, crossing his arms. "As ice, I reckon."

Dutch cocked his head. As close to a look of that emotion, confusion, as one could get from that metal face of his. "We are still friends, though." He extended a gloved hand. Hatchett had shook it, last they'd seen one another, before they'd both turned and gone their separate ways as the sun rose over the wasteland.

"It's not I'm not pleased to see you're still standing, roaming about." Hatchett looked at the girl on the bed. Her clothes were in tatters and covered with dirt, but Hatchett could just tell they in fact formed some kind of uniform or jumpsuit. "It's what I'm sure roams in your shadow."

Dutch lowered his hand. He said nothing.

"I ain't wrong, am I?"

Dutch looked out the window. "No. Except it's coming, in my shadow or not."

Finally, Hatchett entered the room. He went to the girl on the bed. She turned her head away from him. He took her chin and turned her eyes to face him. She glared with an unnerving hatred and forced her gaze away again.

"What is all this?" Hatchett said.

"Not what you think."

"What do I think?"

A pause. "I don't know."

"Neither do I."

Dutch looked at him and then back out the window. His eyes clicking and humming as they adjusted focus from long range to short and back to long.

"Deathclaws," Hatchett said.

Dutch's head whipped around. So did the girl's. A bad feeling inside Hatchett that he'd been nurturing for months had of a sudden reached full maturity. Hatchett turned to leave. "Come on, then," he said. "Bring 'not what I think' with you. I'll be downstairs."

When he reached the top of the stairs and looked down, a dozen sets of eyes looked up at him. "I told you all to go home."

"Who is that man, Sheriff?" Coleman said.

Hatchett walked down the stairs. He went to the bar. Elita glared at him furiously. He gestured for her to go around and take her place. She did, taking her time to glare some more. His deputies hit him with a volley of more or less the same question from every angle. He asked for a shot of whiskey.

"You sure about that, Sheriff?" Marion said. It was the first question to come from him, and the first one Hatchett was glad was asked.

"Just the one. No more, even if I ask. Putting it to all of you to enforce that one, too."

Elita poured him the drink. He sipped it slowly.

"Come on, Sheriff," said Maury. "What happened? I didn't hear no shots. What's going on?"

"The gentleman in room fourteen happens to be an old business acquaintance. It's been a while. He wasn't familiar with the ordinance. I issued his warning. He's to be treated with the warmness of welcome our town's known for. Understood?"

"The girl," Elita said.

"Not what you think."

"What do I think?"

"I don't know," Hatchett said.

Her glare drifted off toward the stairs. Down came Dutch, all his gear and weapons strapped back on—still leading that girl by the rope around her wrists. The room stayed silent and he came down and approached the bar. The deputies gave him a wide berth, except Marion, who gave him a slow look up and down, which Dutch returned.

"You must be a damn fool, Mister," Maury said to Dutch's back.

Dutch turned and looked at him with those robotic eyes, and they whirred and ticked as they did. Once Maury had seemed to shrink a foot or two, Dutch looked back at Marion.

"Jim Marion, Chief Deputy," Marion said.

"Dutch."

That was more than Hatchett wanted anyone to hear. He downed his drink and pushed Dutch along, toward the back entrance and away from prying eyes. "Come along, you. Marion, you may as well. The rest of you, get back to your own damn business."

"Wait," Elita said. She poured a glass of milk and held it to Dutch. Dutch looked at it for a while and reached to accept it. She withdrew it. "For her. Not you, _cabron_."

Dutch pushed his prisoner toward the glass and dropped his end of the rope. Elita came around and tried to put the glass into the girl's hands. The girl gave Elita a look as vile as any Hatchett had ever seen—and there was something in it, the sort of disdain one would give a cockroach, that broke the maternal spell over Elita in an instant. Dutch took the girl under the arm and pulled her after Hatchett. They turned to go. Marion with them.

A voice said at their backs, in a near whisper, "Mother of mercy, fellas. You don't reckon that's Plague?"

Hatchett winced. Marion looked at him with a raised eyebrow and then gave Dutch another appraisal. "Ha ha," Dutch said. They exited the saloon.

Hatchett unlocked the rickety wood outer door to his workshop and then the door of steel bars just inside with keys off his ring. He stepped inside, flipping on the switches to power the single electrical bulb hanging and the heavy fan at the back to start pumping in some breathable air. A haze of dust and an acrid smell of chemical cleaners, preservatives, and solvents hung in the air. Nearly an inch of sawdust had built up on the floor. Unfinished wood furniture hung on hooks from the ceiling in rows. Rusted remains of automobile engines, axles, bicycles, just about anything one could imagine, were piled together against one wall. Heavy wood benches were lined across the other covered with buckets of loose, spent shell casings in every caliber and the equipment for casting bullets and reloading ammunition.

Though Dutch had no nose, small vents did allow air through to his nasal passages. He lifted the half-face, air-filtering respirator that hung around his neck and held it over his nasal ports and mouth as they waited for the spinning fan to clear out the bad air. He didn't bother to secure it to his faceplate, and lowered it again as soon as the smell had faded.

"Nice mess," Dutch said. "All yours?"

"Spends his every day off in here," Marion said. He had hold of Dutch's prisoner, and had replaced the rough knots around her wrists with a pair of handcuffs.

"Someday, I'll get the hang of at least one of my hobbies," Hatchett said. He stepped carefully around some piles of metal scrap and gestured for Dutch to follow. Dutch started to follow and got distracted by the 5mm assault minigun, badly rusted, he found taking up estate on one of Hatchett's gunsmithing tables.

He gestured. "Where'd you get this?"

"The Gatling gun? A scavenger found it with a metal detector, on a crashed flying machine buried in the Red Desert. Should have seen the look on his face when he sold it to me."

"Happy?"

"Saddest boy I ever saw." Hatchett shrugged.

"You think you can make it work?"

"That one? Nah. Parted it out. Managed to get the others going, though."

"Others?"

Hatchett pointed in a meaningless direction. "Got one on a mobile wagon guarding the entrance and one on a rail along the wall. Couldn't fix their little electric motors—rigged up a hand crank to them instead. They work well enough, when the deputies remember to keep them clean and oiled. Come on. I have something real to show you."

Hatchett went to the back wall where white tarps stained with brown splotches had been draped over several tables and some kind of vertical stand. Hatchett pulled the tarp off the tall stand and it fell around his feet. The stand supported, tightly stretched across a wooden frame, the thick, scaly hide of a very large animal.

"You've killed a deathclaw." Dutch couldn't help feeling impressed.

"A pair of them, actually. Got a handsome pair of boots, a gun belt, a bullwhip, and even a duster I can't for the life of me break in out of the first one. Not sure what I'll make out of this one yet."

"For sport, or…?"

Hatchett laughed. "Marion, he wants to know if we got into a fight with these things for the sport of it."

"Well, we'd already mastered nitroglycerine juggling."

"These two were on a reign of terror for about three months before we finally tracked them down. Killed a lot of good people. Who knows how many bad ones."

"You killed them on your own?"

"Somebody had to. Samuel announced that he was on the case, but that wasn't much to count on. Tracking them down was the hard part—found them in a cave, full of bones we didn't want to count. A .45-70 and a steady hand'll do the rest if you don't let them intimidate you."

"I didn't think they _could _be tracked." Dutch put his finger through a large hole in the hide about where it would have covered the beast's sternum. "You astonish me, Hatchett."

"Hard to be enthused about it, though. Two dozen people missing, maybe more I just ain't heard of, and deathclaw tracks at every scene. Strangest thing is we've lost fewer cattle this season than any on record—excluding a few _human_ incidents." Hatchett frowned. "That's usually the most we ever hear of this type of critter. Seems they've lost the taste for beef, dog, gecko, you name it. And they're getting ravenous for human. These two were young yet, too. Not even mature enough to start getting territorial, or bored. I got a feeling the problem didn't end with these two, either."

"No. Up north, people are noting a similar pattern. I may have dealt with that, for now."

Hatchett's face darkened. "Would be curious to know what's going on to the east and west."

"Yes," Dutch said. "I may be going there next."

"There's more."

"Oh?"

"Notice here. These scars." He traced with his finger a line of raised scar tissue along the hide. "Center of the ribcage, and down here also. Here and here. Perfectly straight, perfectly symmetrical. Ain't unusual for a deathclaw to pick up a scar or two, but these aren't natural. I could tell that right off the bat. And then, well…"

Hatchett turned to the table and lifted the tarp from there as well. A pair of large reptilian skulls lay in the center of the table. Stripped of flesh and bleached white.

"One of my deputies tries his hand at taxidermy as a hobby—never tried that one myself. He wanted to mount the heads, for decorating the office. I thought why not. He'd stripped the skulls, for stuffing, when…well."

Hatchett pointed with his finger—turned the skull over, and pointed again, and again, and again. There were computer chips implanted in both skulls.

"Now I just wouldn't know what to make of that. Would you?"

Dutch picked up one of the skulls. "The acid he used to strip the skulls likely dissolved the silicone in these. Otherwise, we might have gotten some data off them."

Hatchett crossed his arms. "Answer that question."

Dutch set down the skull. "I have…hunches. Of little value. Can offer no real answer." He looked at his prisoner. She stood back near the entrance, staring at the skulls from across the room. Hatchett followed his gaze.

"Can she?" Hatchett said.

She looked down at her feet.

"It's possible. She may know even less. Thought perhaps you could help me with that. She isn't open to…interrogation."

"What flavor of interrogation?"

"What flavor would you suggest?"

Dutch looked back at Hatchett, and realized that his expression had turned very cold in a hurry. "I don't suggest. Only suggest _not_. Not here, not anywhere, not ever."

That was a surprise, and on some level an inconvenient one. "Since when?"

Hatchett looked away. "Not sure. Decided to kill and bury that side of Sheriff Hatchett after the fighting was done with, before it consumed itself and every other side of him in the fires it kept starting. To pin it down to an instant, I guess when I found that book in the old courthouse. I'll show it to you later. It has a way of doing things in it—an old style way. It don't get things done as fast as my old way, but I feel and sleep a lot better at night after a day of following it."

If Dutch had eyebrows, he'd have raised one. "What, a bible?"

Hatchett snorted. "No, you damn fool. A law book. Civil rights. Due process. The old world ways that even the old world forgot. Maybe I make a few edits here or there. It makes things slow sometimes…more complicated. But on the whole, I've learned, it grows a stronger tree in the long run." He looked at Dutch's prisoner. "Besides…a pretty thing like that. I never been that crazy."

"You have. I was there."

"And you ask me why I say goodbye to you more warmly than hello."

Dutch pointed to a third tarp with his chin. "What about that one?"

"Hmmm? Oh, no. That's a motorcycle."

"Really?"

Hatchett lifted off the tarp, revealing a nearly pristine black and chrome Indian motorcycle. Sleek and deadly looking—configured for sporting and emblazoned with tri-foil nuclear decals on both sides. "Had this taking up space for a while, actually."

Dutch knelt down beside the bike and skimmed his hands across it. It was nearly complete and almost immaculate. "Incredible."

"You know something about it?"

"It's a 2071 Electroflow. Very limited production. They run on micro fusion power—had their own micro fusion reactors, the same kind the military fielded in the T51B…power armor. They could last fifty years without needing to be refueled—could cover ninety miles on a charge if kept to half throttle."

"How do you know that?"

"We had some bikes…where I'm from."

"Well, I found this in an old factory we tore down for the building materials. It was in a sealed off room—suppose that's why it kept so well."

"Does it work?"

"Don't rightly know. Someone snatched the micro fusion reactor pack off it. Good luck finding one of them, at any price."

Dutch swallowed. "I have one."

"You what?"

"Not on me. I buried it. In case I ever had need of one."

"That kind of thing could make you a wealthy man, you know."

"A man with a working Electroflow _is_ a wealthy man."

"Not much use without real paved roads to ride it on."

"Not in its current configuration. But with a few modifications to the frame—an off-road fork and some longer travel shocks. Trim off some extra weight here and there. Different tires, of course… It'd be a bit of work, but well worth it. A man could be anywhere in the region inside of a day. Could carry his own fuel. Move almost silently."

"Well, it's just parts to me. You're welcome to it, I suppose. Even if I had a reactor pack, I'd just use it to power something in town. Give the doc an X-ray machine, or set up a weather computer to warn us about storms, or something for the farmers to maximize the harvest. You know, waste it."

Dutch mounted the bike, pretended to drive it.

"Yeah." Hatchett started to go. "Let's go somewhere cool and quiet and sit down on this issue. It's your turn to start telling _me_ a few things."

Hatchett looked at the prisoner as he spoke. She looked up at him for just a moment and then her eyes seemed to roll back. Her legs buckled and she collapsed. Marion caught her as she fell and pulled her out of the stinking workshop and outside. He laid her down on the ground in the shade and fanned her face with his hat. Hatchett stepped out after them, and Dutch behind him. "What's this about, now?" Hatchett said.

"She just up and fainted," Marion said. "Not that she looked real healthy beforehand."

"Go fetch Doc McCabe."

"Yeah, all right." Marion put his hat back on and set off in the direction of McCabe's office.

Hatchett knelt down next to the girl and felt her pulse and her forehead. He looked up at Dutch. "You got an idea what's wrong with her?"

Dutch shrugged. "Lack of sleep, and dehydration, I expect."

Hatchett gave him a look. "You not been watering her?"

"Been trying. She refuses to drink the water or the food I offered her. She had her own supply, for a time. It ran out."

"How long ago was that?"

"A couple days."

"In the sun? Walking?"

Dutch shrugged. "I poured some in her mouth a few times. She spat it out."

Marion returned with a man with a doctor's bag and Hatchett described the issue. The look the doctor gave Dutch contained too much surprise to be convincingly scolding. "This girl needs water desperately, whether she'll take it willingly or not. Marion, help me carry her back to my office. I'll start her on IV fluids."

"She won't like that," Dutch said.

"Well her kidneys will, if they haven't failed already." The doctor and Marion picked her girl up and started back toward his office. Hatchett and Dutch walked alongside.

"She'll fight you," Dutch said.

"I don't understand this at all."

"That makes four of us," Marion said.

"Do you lot mind if I save this young woman's life?"

"Look, Doc," Hatchett said. "For her own good, do you think you could keep her under, till she's had a few quarts pumped into her?"

"I suppose I could," Doc McCabe said. "Is that really necessary?"

"Short of strapping her down," Dutch said. "You may want to anyway. Would also be wise to keep any sharp objects out of her reach. She's liable to cut your throat, if you let her."

"I'll stay and keep an eye on her," Marion said.

"You've been warned."

The Doc and Marion carried the girl into the doctor's office, leaving Dutch and Hatchett standing out front. They looked around—the townsfolk had all stopped their business again and stood watching Hatchett and Dutch in rapt attention.

"Come on," Hatchett said.

Hatchett took Dutch to the sheriff's office and locked his weapons and gear and armor in the cage with the rest of the arsenal he used to arm his deputies. Then he took Dutch to the other end of town and paid a pair of lovely ladies to give him a hot bath, and paid them enough that they didn't ask questions about the parts of him that were machine—his metal face and mechanical eyes, or the computer permanently affixed to his arm.

While he waited for them to finish, he went to the general store and bought Dutch something new to wear—a new pair of harness work boots to replace his pair held together with tape, a pair of black denim jeans, and a checked flannel shirt. When he came back, the ladies were toweling Dutch off. Naked, he looked to have more scars on his chest and back than Hatchett had seen on men who'd spent their lives as captives of abusive slavers. Some of the scars had the natural look of stab, bullet, or burn wounds. The majority looked more like the ones Hatchett had noticed on the deathclaw. He also looked alarmingly underweight, though most men who spent their lives wandering the wasteland tended to be.

One of the ladies wrapped a towel around Dutch's lower half and squeezed his hand before they walked out. Dutch waved them goodbye.

"Make yourself a friend?" Hatchett said.

"They were more welcoming than most of your townsfolk. One of them did a…thing with her hands for me, under the water. Did you ask her to?"

Hatchett scratched his head. "I paid them extra. They may have thought…" He threw the pile of new clothes at Dutch's feet. "Let's not talk about this. Dress yourself."

"I have clothes. They said they'd wash them."

An older lady came by with some rags that turned out to be clothes. Only a few articles had survived the wash—a navy blue hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap both marked with a large yellow 7, and the same old biker jacket he'd worn for years. Dutch put on all the clothing Hatchett had brought but kept his old—layering on the sweatshirt and the jacket over it. He put on the baseball cap and pulled up the hood of his shirt, perhaps in the hopes that it would make the machinery that replaced his face a little less conspicuous. The clothes hung about his skinny frame like a child's hand-me-downs.

"You're a few sizes too small," Hatchett said. "Gonna have to do something about that."

"I do feel a bit light, now that you mention it." Dutch fastened his belt, and tapped a black nylon holster hanging from the side of it.

Hatchett produced Dutch's 10mm pistol, as advanced a sidearm as Hatchett's own six-shooters were primitive. "You ought to, at that."

The pistol felt like a miniature tank in Hatchett's hand—a three pound slab of stainless steel and a handle thick enough to accommodate twelve high-velocity 10mm rounds, with a self-cocking trigger and sights that glowed in the dark as if radioactive. Dutch took the pistol and chambered a round, then used the decocker to lower the hammer before slipping the pistol into its holster.

"I'd prefer to have my SMG."

Hatchett shook his head. "And keep what you've got out of sight. I don't need anyone knowing I let you carry it."

Dutch pulled the bottom of his sweatshirt over the pistol. "I see people all over the streets with weapons on their hips."

"They're town residents, and have been for more than a year with no complaints against their characters. That's the rule."

"Does this mean you have no complaints against my character?"

"You're two damned thin," Hatchett said.

As evening neared, Hatchett had two steak dinners with beans and potatoes delivered to the sheriff's station and they ate together at Hatchett's desk. When Dutch finished his, Hatchett pushed his leftovers onto his plate and told him to keep eating. As night fell, they went and sat out on the porch and drank lemonade and tequila—Dutch had requested the tequila.

"Your tastes have changed," Hatchett said. "Dutch drinking hard liquor."

"Hatchett _not_ drinking. Don't know which is stranger."

"I still have a drink," Hatchett said. He poured himself a shot and tipped it back to prove it. "Just one, though, and that was it. It's not I'm an addict or nothing. Just find I do my job better this way. Was a time, I recall, you wouldn't even drink _water_ unless you saw it filtered and added some of those little tablets to it."

"Oh yes," Dutch said. "Had an…awakening, since then."

"Is that why that girl won't?"

Dutch nodded. "She sleeps, yet."

The doc still had her under, but Hatchett gathered Dutch spoke in metaphor.

"She can't use those tablets?"

"The tablets, it was decided, did not work. I was proof of that." Dutch sipped his drink. "You've changed more than I have. I see you've gone white."

"Hmm?"

"Your hair. Had a few gray strands before. White as a ghost now."

Hatchett frowned. "Well you've gone…something or other."

"Defective, I'm told. And rusty. I haven't been keeping maintenance up to spec, I will admit."

"What happened?" Hatchett said. "Did they kick you out, or did you leave?"

Dutch didn't answer. He poured himself another drink.

"It's all right. You were never much to let anyone in on a secret."

"You spend your life conditioning yourself for secrecy, and it's sometimes a difficult routine to break." Dutch took another gulp of liquor and took a deep breath. "You know my origins. A prewar facility, hopelessly, ineffectually, stuck in the past—or so I thought. Turns out, as many secrets were kept from me as from you. My time apart from them, among an outer humanity they told us didn't exist, led me to question their word. My curiosity led me to…break rules. Look for answers to questions I was commanded not to ask. I uncovered a sinister truth. About my own purpose for existing."

"That's forbidden knowledge for more than just you," Hatchett said.

Dutch thought about that, and then continued. "The knowledge made me an enemy of my own people. It also triggered an early beginning to a series of events which…I believe are unfolding as we speak."

Hatchett looked at Dutch and waited for him to continue. Before he could, a young man in a ball cap came running up. He carried what appeared to be a picture in a frame.

"Good evening, Sh— Sheriff Hatchett. And, well…uh. Good evening to you too, sir."

He bowed his head to Hatchett and to Dutch. He stared for a long time at Dutch.

"You got something to say, young man?" Hatchett said.

"Well, you see. What I have here is… Well, I was wondering if, well, your friend here might do me the kindness of…"

He extended the framed picture toward Dutch. Dutch took it and looked at it for a moment. The boy took a pen from his shirt pocket and tried to offer Dutch that as well. Hatchett raised an eyebrow. Dutch turned the picture around to let him see it.

It wasn't a photograph, but an artist's rendering—four men standing in a sort of stylized action pose, drawn in the fashion of an old prewar comic book. One of the four men Hatchett recognized from his long black coat and hat, two smoking revolvers, and sheriff's badge, though the face didn't match too closely. Under the man's feet was the word Death in comic book logo style letters. He recognized a somewhat better rendering of Samuel Greene in his trench coat and helmet with a bazooka on his shoulder and the word War underneath. A large, shirtless, muscle-bound man covered in tattoos and packing a handheld minigun was Famine. The man named Plague didn't look like anything but a black silhouette with a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

"Well, please, sir. I know it's just a corny picture and all that. But yours is the last signature I need before I have all four, and gosh if that wouldn't just make me happier than hell. I reckon I might be the only boy in the world with all four."

"I don't recall I ever signed that damned fool thing," Hatchett said.

"You did, sir. It was a long time ago. Not surprised you don't remember. I reckon you were, well, what I mean is that you were…"

"Get going, boy," Hatchett said. "I reckon it's your bed time."

The boy looked one last time at Dutch with imploring eyes. Dutch took the pen and drew an X on the picture and handed it back. The boy ran off, too happy to remember to ask for his pen back. Dutch pocketed the pen.

"It's funny," Dutch said. "Enemies once friends, friends once enemies—can't seem to escape any of them calling me a disease."

"Ain't no end of the trouble being called 'Death' has caused me, I'll tell you."

"On the subject. War and Famine. I assume you have means to contact them."

Hatchett leaned back in the rocking chair. "Well, that's tricky. Samuel and I had…a falling out."

"Hard to see that."

"Some folks who get along well when the world is a certain way…have a habit of not, when the world is another. Even if the change is that it gets better."

"What happened?"

"When all the dust of the fighting had settled, when we were building this town, there was some debate about what we'd do for leadership, government. Some wanted to put the Major in charge."

"Not everyone?"

"Everybody had their own ideas. And everybody made speeches. Voices shouting back and forth in the dark. Scared people willing to do whatever they were told. Eventually, we decided to put it to a vote, and I knew Samuel had the most people on his side, on account of being the big hero. He put forward his plan for the town. Really, he had more of a military base in mind. I didn't… agree with that course of action. Just before they started to cast the votes, I spoke up."

"You spoke against Greene?"

"I didn't want it to be taken as an insult. It's not I'm not—that we shouldn't all be—grateful for what he did for all of us. He's a great leader on a battlefield, but you can't till a battlefield. But I think what I said, he took as an insult all the same."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, some overblown nonsense. Something like: Samuel Greene dug a thousand foxholes, but never a well. Built great fortresses, but never a house. Buried a thousand bodies, but never a seed. If we'd thrown in our lot with him, we'd all be doing drills and pushups instead of farming and building. Instead of a saloon, a barracks. Instead of a courthouse, a wall to line them up against. I said it in front of everyone and I said it to his face. He lost the vote by just a few, but that didn't make him any less bitter. He basically gave us the middle finger, left to start on his own, and took everyone loyal to him with him."

"He's doing all right, as far as I've heard."

"He's doing just as I said he would. Plays war games out in the badlands all day and night. Can't even support himself, but leaches off of others—gets by on handouts from the people he says he's protecting and from pillaging the pillagers. For all he gives in the form of peace and protection, he takes in the food and supplies we have to donate, and the work we lose because he's taken another generation of the able bodied into full time service. That's not civilization. As far as I'm concerned, that's just another kind of raiding."

"Wow," Dutch said. "Laid it out, didn't you."

"Figure I'll say it now, so we won't have to keep bringing it up." Hatchett sipped his drink. "There's no guarantee humanity in any form will be able to sustain itself on this scorched rock much longer. We're barely hanging on—and raiders are one of the smaller reasons for it. Living to make war is a step backward. Hell, it's right there in the name he gave it all, isn't it? 'Free Wastes.' That's what I call what comes out of the back end of a Brahmin. Waste. Yeah, sure, it's free. You can take all you want."

"Ha. Ha." That laugh again.

"In that sense—hell, leaving the Khan in charge probably would have done better in the grand scheme than Samuel Greene. I think…it was me saying something to that effect, to Samuel's face, that built this wall between us. Maybe if I'd been a little more sober, little more diplomatic, I'd have got him to stay."

"That would have been…optimal." Dutch said.

"Hell, I guess I could have used him a few times, but he's cut me out of his little FWA party. He and his men don't set foot around Slickrock, and expect me to keep my own distance. I started my team of regulators to keep the peace, and I think I struck a nice balance. Every one of them pulls his weight on top of pulling a trigger. Even my full-time boys have their part time duties—helping with building, farming. We handle what comes. And not so much comes, on account of us keeping to ourselves."

Hatchett finally got quiet, except for the creaking of his rocking chair.

"Samuel needs to hear what I have to say as much as you. We will likely need him and his men during the events that are coming."

"Nothing stopping you going to see him."

"I would prefer to get us all together."

Hatchett closed his eyes. "I can send word to him we need to talk. No guarantees he'll listen, though."

Dutch thought about that. "What about Alcatraz?"

"He tried to talk the Major into staying here, but when he didn't, he went on with him all the same. Then my understanding is he parted ways with him too, a short while later—but he didn't come back here, so I don't know. Rumor is he's gone hermit or something. Found a cave somewhere to be alone. If anyone's seen a hair of him in years, I haven't heard of it. Who knows? Maybe he's found himself a place closer to happiness than any of us."

"Perhaps. Still, disappointing."

"I reckon it's best that way. People will be talking enough, the idea two of us are back in one place, and then three? All four of us again, and people are going to act like the world's afire again."

"The world may be."

Hatchett's eyes opened, then closed again.

Later on in the evening, when the streets had cleared, Hatchett let Dutch accompany him on his patrol around the town and along the ramparts of the high adobe wall that surrounded it—checking on the guards at their stations, listening to reports of any happenings around town. They looked across the town, across a mix of buildings and rooftops built of clay or brick or wood or miscellaneous squares of material scavenged from prewar buildings. The town rested at a high elevation, and looking out away from the town, they saw fresh trees growing around the nearby water source atop the hillside and snowy capped mountains in the far distance to the east. Looking in the other direction, the world sloped toward a barren moonscape and in the far, far distance the ruins of an ancient city subjected to a nearly direct hit. The despair of the past and the dead world in one direction, and the hope of the future and a new one in the other.

"The way the town is built, it's like it's always trying to climb up the slick rock," Hatchett said. "It's slow going, and occasionally you might find yourself slipping, sliding back down, but if that happens you just dust off and go at it again. That's Slickrock."

Dutch sat on the edge of the wall looking off. "Where does the climb end?"

"You can't see it?"

Dutch shook his head.

"Maybe you just don't have the right kind of eyes."

"I can magnify my vision ten times. And see in the dark. You need spectacles to read." Dutch stood. "I wish I had eyes like yours."

Before retiring, they stopped at Doc McCabe's to check in on Marion and the prisoner. She'd woken up. Her wrists and legs were bound to the bed with soft padded cuffs, and she lay thrashing and muttering something unintelligible. Her face was soaked with sweat and deep circles had formed around her eyes. A plastic bag hanging on a pole beside her bed dripped clear liquid through an IV needle taped to her arm.

"And here I was expecting her to look _better_," Hatchett said.

Marion looked over at him from his chair beside her bed. "She's had two bags pumped into her, and hasn't been the bathroom once. If we let her, she tries to tear that needle out of her arm like it's pumping in poison."

"It _is_ poison," the girl screamed. "Why won't you listen? I can feel what it's doing to me. It's _killing_ me. My head is burning. My brain is on fire." She beat the back of her head furiously against her pillow. "You fucking savages. How can you do this to a person?"

McCabe entered from a back room. "What's going on here, Doc?" Hatchett said.

"Honestly, I find it rather strange," McCabe said. "There's certainly nothing in the fluids she's getting. It's pure saline. Distilled water, salt, and glucose. Absolutely pure, absolutely sterile. Yet for the last few hours she's had a drastically elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. Can't see a reason why. Meanwhile she complains of agonizing pain, wild thoughts, hearing voices… Her mood fluctuates between rage and despair. Without any other information, I'd say her condition is more like she's suffering from—"

"Withdrawal," Dutch said.

McCabe peered at him. "Yes, exactly."

"Like from mentats?" Hatchett said.

McCabe frowned at the mention, but if he felt insulted, he didn't say so. "The opposite, I'd say. These convulsions she's been suffering from since she woke up make me think it's more of a withdrawal from some kind of psychoactive depressant. A sedative, or a hypnotic."

"It's this poison he's pumping into me!" the girl screamed. "Can't you see it? It's black as tar. My veins are turning black around it. My whole arm is turning black. Please, you have to stop it. You have to get it out."

Marion leaned in and looked at her arm. He looked at them and shook his head.

"Seems to be suffering hallucinations, as well. I _could_ give her something to calm her, I suppose," Doc McCabe said. He took a syringe from the pocket of his white coat. Hatchett took it from him and looked it over. "A fairly strong sedative, but relatively harmless."

"You'd just be slowing her recovery," Dutch said. "She's already been going cold turkey for days—she can't have much left to go. Let her sweat the rest out."

"What exactly has she been on?" McCabe said.

"Water, of course," Dutch said. He patted the doc on the arm. "You're doing a great job." He went outside to stand on the porch.

"That metal mask he wears…" McCabe began to say.

"It's not a mask," Hatchett said. "It's his face."

McCabe nodded slowly. "That's very interesting."

Hatchett turned to Marion. "You don't have to stand guard here all night."

Marion shrugged. "I don't mind. Some of the nonsense she's babbling is…also very interesting."

"You writing it down?"

Marion pointed a finger at the side of his head.

"I'll be back in the morning." Hatchett went outside. Dutch waited for him by the street.

"I left the key to my room in my old pants," Dutch said.

"I don't think Elita wants to see you back in that saloon any time soon."

"I paid for it."

Hatchett pulled him along toward the sheriff's station. "Don't worry. I have an unoccupied room or two I could rent you for a few nights."

"A cell, you mean."

"Same kind of bed I sleep on. Fresh sheets, I promise."

"I'll have to listen to that deaf idiot humming to himself all night."

Hatchett took the syringe full of McCabe's sedative from his pocket. "Not after I inject his supper full of this, I reckon."

That morning, Hatchett rose from bed early—stirred from his sleep by the questions that bounced around in his head and the unease in his stomach. Dutch was still asleep in his cell, as were the two prisoners sprawled out on the floor facedown and snoring quietly. Hatchett went outside and went straight to Doc McCabe's clinic. Inside, he found Marion asleep in his chair, McCabe nowhere in sight, and the girl laying still and breathing slowly, watching him enter without a sound.

Hatchett put a hand on Marion's shoulder, and his eyes snapped open. "I'm good," he said.

"Go on home and get some real sleep," Hatchett said. "I'll take over."

"Yeah, all right." Marion stood, stretched his back, put on his hat, and headed out.

Hatchett sat down and removed his hat and looked at the girl. She stared back at him quietly. She looked better, finally. Somebody had sponge-bathed her—cleaned away the dirt and dried blood. The circles were gone from her eyes. Her skin didn't look as dry, though she did appear to be badly sunburned around her face and lips. She also still looked terribly underfed.

"I feel much better now," she said.

"I think you're on the verge of starving to death," Hatchett said. "What would you like for breakfast, young lady?"

She turned her head away from him. "I won't eat your poison…" she said.

Hatchett sighed. "Now, I can't force a cheeseburger through that needle in your arm, but I'm not going to watch a young lady in my custody waste away because she has some inane notion about the food my people eat. I will force a funnel into your mouth. I will chew your breakfast for you and spit it into you like a baby bird if I truly have to."

She looked at him. Her lower lip trembled. He took a breath, and relaxed his voice.

"On the other hand, we can both keep our dignities. I can undo those straps around your arms, let you take that ugly needle out of you, and we'll both go next door and have a world class breakfast together like civilized adults. It's your choice."

She thought for a moment, and finally nodded. He stood and unbuckled the straps around her wrists and ankles. She picked off the tape around her IV and slowly drew out the needle and tossed it aside. He helped her out of bed—she wobbled, nearly fell. He caught her under one arm. "That's right. Just lean on me. Take your time."

He could feel her eyes on one of his revolvers, but it was strapped down in its holster, and nobody had ever been fast enough to do that to him. They'd dressed her in a hospital gown, and Hatchett didn't see her old clothes anyplace nearby. He found her a pair of slippers next to the bed, and a lab coat hanging on the door. He helped her into both, then he pulled her along. They walked like a gentleman and a lady, arm in arm, to the diner, and Hatchett sat her and himself down at his usual table and whistled for the waitress.

"I'm not eating some giant lizard, or a rat, or a scorpion, or—" She started to say. The waitress approached.

"Morning, Sheriff, and who is…" The waitress stared at Hatchett's guest. Hatchett coughed. "Uh, yes. What can I get you two?"

"I'll have the usual," Hatchett said. "The young lady will have…" Hatchett picked up the menu and looked it over. "The young lady will have pancakes. Six should do."

"Six? We make our pancakes right big, if you remember."

"Six. And a tall glass of milk."

"Well, I'll be right back."

The waitress headed off, leaving Hatchett and his guest in silence.

"Pancakes," Hatchett said. "This place is famous for them, you know. Pretty much the pride of the town, our pancakes. That's flour, sugar, milk? Nothing sinister about that, is there?"

"The milk," she said. "How many heads does the cow it came from have?"

"The usual number, of course." Hatchett held up two fingers.

She shook her head. "You're freaks, you know. Everything out here—diseased mutants."

She was a small, petite girl. Mid-twenties. Brunette. Underweight. Sharp features—sharp jaw, sharp, thick eyebrows. Piercing, pale blue eyes. The look she gave Hatchett as she said that almost made him lose his patience.

"You cut that nonsense out right now, or we go back to option A, remember?"

She looked at the table.

"I still don't even know your name. I'm John. John Hatchett. Sheriff."

She looked at the table.

"It's your turn," Hatchett said.

"Emmy," she muttered. "Two, one, nine…"

"What? Emmy? That's your name?"

She looked at the table.

The waitress brought along their meals. "Sheriff, I heard the craziest rumor yesterday…"

"Not now," Hatchett said. She went away. Hatchett looked at the girl…Emmy. "Eat, Emmy," he said.

She had six large, gold-colored, fluffy pancakes stacked in front of her, steaming up a wonderful smell. Hatchett picked up the bottle of heated syrup the waitress had set beside her plate and poured it over them until they dripped with it. He cut a piece off with her fork, stabbed it onto the end, and handed her the fork. "Eat."

She took the fork and slowly, uncertainly, ate the piece of pancake off the end. She chewed carefully and swallowed. Then she got another bite on her own. Then another, and another. Soon, it seemed, she found she had more trouble stopping than she did getting started. She ate faster than she could chew—syrup streaming down her chin. Sure enough, she nearly choked herself.

"If you don't slow down, those just actually _might_ make you sick." Hatchett slid the milk toward her. She drank to clear her throat, and then drank until the glass was empty. Hatchett gestured for the waitress to bring her another.

Finally, Hatchett took up his knife and fork and went to work on his own breakfast. He took the morning paper from his pocket, unfolded it neatly on the table, put on his glasses, and read the top stories as he ate. Soon he noticed Emmy had stopped eating. She sat staring at the table again—no, not at table. At his hands, at the way he used his knife and fork, and at the paper he was reading.

"What?" he said.

She looked away, and went back to eating.

"You thinking it's a might strange that the diseased mutant actually eats like less of an animal than you do?"

She stared at him. She picked up her napkin and cleaned off her face. She began to eat more slowly. He separated one of the finished pages of his newspaper from the rest and slid it toward her. Two stories about that page. One about one nearby village's efforts to harvest renewable wind energy using scavenged parts from prewar turbines—the other about the rising death toll of the recent, and increasingly frequent, deathclaw attacks on humans. He waited for her to read them.

Over time, the scowl on her face seemed to lift away like a cloud, and Hatchett saw there was truth in that notion he'd had all along. That look of disgust she gave everyone wasn't her real face, but something she put on because she didn't know better. He didn't see real evil there—just a young person filled with someone's strange ideas.

She went back to eating. They both finished their breakfasts and Hatchett sat quietly reading the paper, watching out of the corner of his eye as the color of life returned to the girl's face, and with her renewed vitality a renewed sense of interest. She looked all around the diner at the men and women and their families coming in and sitting down, being courteous and polite and eating good healthy food and paying for it with hard-earned wages. He could see the search for understanding on her face—her struggle with a difficult question inside of her.

"It's not supposed to be this way," she finally said.

"What way?"

"There isn't…aren't supposed to be…civilized people."

"I thought they weren't people. I thought they were mutants."

"There _are_ mutants, though. Specimens—green flesh, rotting off. No minds of their own. Just…"

She seemed to be talking about ghouls. Hatchett could have said they did indeed exist, and that some had very sharp minds for her information. He decided to let her train of thought run its course.

"They must just not know. Otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't…"

She noticed him watching her. She stopped talking.

"I understand you have secrets in you," Hatchett said. "I think you're mixed up in something very evil, but I don't know for sure you're really a part of it, or another fool just lost in the dark like I am. I see a very different person in you now than I saw yesterday. I see a person fighting some manner of confusion. And maybe when she overcomes that too, we might both just find out she's a young, frightened girl who also happens to be as pretty as any I've ever seen."

She didn't say anything.

"I'll say one thing about her though," Hatchett said. "She'd best put that knife she hid up her sleeve back on her plate where it belongs."

She put the knife back on her plate.

Somewhere outside, someone set to ringing the town bell furiously. A deputy filled the entrance. There were traces of blood on his shirt. He gestured for Hatchett and ran back out. Hatchett put on his hat and stood. "Come along," he said.

He pulled Emmy out of her seat and along with him. There was a small commotion outside as deputies were hurrying along a Brahmin-drawn wagon down the street, passing the diner. Hatchett walked to catch up with it and peered into the back of the wagon to find it soaked with blood, and containing at least two bodies. It rumbled past him faster than he could keep up with it. He grabbed Coleman.

"What happened?" he said.

"Another animal attack, from what I gather," Coleman said. "A family of farmers down the hill. Locals, Sheriff."

Hatchett caught up with the wagon again in front of Doc McCabe's. McCabe stood over the bodies in the back of the wagon. He doctor's coat was already covered with blood. A farmer in overalls soaked with blood jumped down from the wagon. "Doc, tell me. Are they going to make it?"

"Your sister and your brother in law—no, I'm afraid not. They've been dead for hours."

The farmer collapsed to his knees in sobs.

"The boy…the boy is alive. Help me get him into my clinic. Quickly." McCabe looked down from the wagon and saw Hatchett there, the girl Emmy beside him. He paid them no further attention. He jumped down with more urgency than his age should have allowed. He started to pull a young boy, soaked in blood, from the back of the wagon. Coleman moved to help. Hatchett stepped in as well. He held the boy's arm as they lifted, only to realize that it wasn't attached to the rest of his body. They carried the boy inside. Doc McCabe donned a robe and a mask and started to cut open his clothes with a pair of scissors.

A sandy-haired boy, covered in freckles. He didn't look much over ten years old.

"He's lost a lot of blood. Where's that farmer? Coleman, go out there and ask him if he knows the boy's blood type. Sheriff, hand me—"

Hatchett still held the boy's arm. He offered it to the doctor. McCabe shook his head. Hatchett felt a fool and set it aside on a tray.

Coleman dashed back in. "He says he doesn't know."

"Of _course_ he doesn't." The doc grabbed a syringe out of a drawer and injected it into the boy's neck. "These damned brutes. They don't make anything easy. I don't have the equipment for this kind of…"

"I do," Emmy said. Not loudly.

Hatchett looked at her. "What's that?"

"The defect—Dutch. He has my bag. My equipment."

"You're a doctor?"

"I'm a surgeon. I can help him."

"Doc?"

McCabe studied her for a moment, and then, without hesitation, said, "Then put on some gloves and help, for goodness sake."

She looked at Hatchett.

He nodded at her. "I'll get your bag."

He ran to the station. Dutch had risen—stood on the porch, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. If he noticed the blood on Hatchett's hands as he ran by, he didn't say a word about it. Hatchett ran to unlock the cage with Dutch's equipment inside. "She said you had a bag of hers," he yelled.

"That one," Dutch said. He pointed.

Hatchett took the bag back to McCabe's clinic. Emmy had on a pair of gloves and a surgical mask and had the boy's chest open with a scalpel and was groping around inside. McCabe was bringing out glass bottles filled with blood from his refrigerators and was hanging them from a pole.

Emmy opened the bag and found some kind of electronic device inside. She secured it around the boy's remaining arm and a glass screen on it flickered to life and it began to issue a beeping sound and blips of information. "He's O negative."

"Good. I have some of that here."

"Get some into him. Quickly."

"I still haven't started an IV."

She pointed to the machine. "It's started one for you, the purple entry port." Emmy took another device from the bag. At the press of a button, the end sparked and glowed white hot. She pushed the end into the open wound and smoke and the smell of burnt flesh rose. "I've stopped the bleeding. Pulse is still dropping."

Hatchett decided to step outside. Dutch was there—facing away, his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Hatchett went across the street to a trough for watering Brahmin and washed the blood off his hands and forearms. There was more on his shirt. He dried his hands with his kerchief and wiped the wet kerchief across his brow.

"It's still happening," Hatchett said. "We didn't even slow it down."

"We may have done just the opposite," Dutch said.

"I want to say we'll make them pay, but I don't even know who the hell they are. That girl…she's one of them? She's as lost as I am. I don't understand it."

"The water they gave her, and possibly some cybernetics in her, which I disabled. They suppress that type of dissentious thinking—feelings of moral doubt, any urge to question authority."

"We call that kind of water whiskey here."

"Separated from it for long enough, she might just become a real person, and by some miracle perhaps even a good one."

"So why? Who and why?"

"Their goal is the eradication of free thought—the reduction of the human species into a drone workforce. In your case—those deemed resistant or incompatible with their kind of assimilation—their goal is eradication alone."

"_Whose_ goal?" Hatchett said.

"I don't know," Dutch said.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: What the Hell Happened Here?

**Raiding the Raiders – Strangely Quiet – Very Strangely Quiet – What the Fuck – WHAT THE FUCK**

It took seven days to track Kango back to his compound. He made his home at the edge of the ruins of Newcastle, in the decaying husk of a long abandoned Poseidon oil refinery—abandoned since long before the war, since the last of America's oil ran dry. It stood as the alien relic of a forgotten time left as much to mystery and imagination as the empires of the Aztecs or the Pharos. The smokestacks and spires reached out of the earth like the fingers of some horror buried alive and trying to claw its way skyward.

"Check those towers. I see crow's nests. Look for snipers."

"I'm looking at them with the thermal scope, Major. Nothing warm in any of them."

"Alright. Scout Artillery, are you in position?"

"Roger, sir. Have mortars and machineguns ready to cover your advance."

"Scout Recon?"

"In position, sir. Seeing no movement."

"Johnston, how's that gully looking?"

"Looks like it was used for runoff from the refinery, Major. I'm getting high hydrophluoric readings and other nasty stuff, but no radiation. I wouldn't want to live near here, but we'll be good to walk through."

"All right, Commandoes. Fall in."

Samuel let himself slide under a rusted fence and down the steep embankment into the gully. Ancient litter and rusted barrels and debris filled the floor of it. Not a single plant grew among the bleached clean rocks along its base. The gully led on all the way into the heart of the refinery. Samuel readied his carbine.

Knowles took point as usual. They walked in rows of two down the length of the gully. They went in underneath ruined stone bridges and around piled garbage. In one section, where the gully was deepest, a trickle of green fluid still collected in the center. The bones of many beasts large and small were piled all around. Ribs and skulls crunched under Samuel's boots. The black spires loomed overhead. They cut their way through a wire fence and advanced through the industrial ruin in a wedge formation. There was no sign of life or movement in any direction.

"Doesn't look like anybody's home," Danziger said.

They passed through a courtyard lined with cages—iron bars and chicken wire. They resembled kennels, but Samuel knew they weren't for keeping animals. Several of the cages contained beds and chairs and dishes.

"Slave pens," Stoker said.

"Where are the slaves? Don't tell me the motherfucker cleared out," Danziger said.

Samuel gritted his teeth.

They went into a large grey building with boarded windows. In a great circular room, chairs were arranged around a central hearth filled with ashes. A chair welded together from jagged steel and covered in furs stood at the opposite end of the room. A metal rack built into the chair looked like it was meant to hold a sword—Kango's sword.

"We're in Kango's living room," Samuel said.

"Except nobody's living in it," Knowles said.

"Spread out," Samuel said. "Look for something to tell us where they've gone."

Samuel picked up a metal poker and prodded the ashes in the hearth. He found embers still glowing near the bottom. "We're not that far behind," he said. Stepping away, he noticed a pile of ash at his feet, as though it had spilled over. He noticed another a short distance away.

"Major, come take a look at this," Cranston said. He knelt over a pool of drying blood and some wads of bloody bandage on the floor next to Kango's chair. He handed something to Samuel as he approached. It was Kango's helmet, covered with blood and punctured by a single hole about where Kango's jaw would have been when wearing it.

"So he has been here." Samuel set the helmet aside. Cranston had found a bag on the floor and pulled out blades, needles and thread, and syringes.

"Little primitive, but most everything a stone age trauma surgeon would need in here. Someone treated him."

"And left their tools?"

Cranston found a couple of braided leather cords, saturated with dried blood. "Including tourniquets. Used. How do you tourniquet a head-wound? A separate patient."

"Holes in the walls," Danziger said.

He stood by the far wall touching it in places with a finger—his finger vanished into scorched black holes in wall in several places. "Here, here, here…damn, they're all over. Weird how they look all scorched like that."

"Fresh?" Samuel said.

"They look it. I'm not finding any casings on the ground, though."

Johnston went over to one large scorch mark on the wall and waved his computer over it. "There wouldn't be," he said. "Holy shit."

"What is it?" Samuel said.

"There's an isotopic signature here. Particles embedded in the bricks. These holes were made by military weapons."

"Like ours, you mean?"

"No. We're armed with the dated shit the military handed down to the National Guard, twenty years after it became obsolete. The real military had plasma, laser, and pulse weapons. A plasma gun made this hole here."

Samuel had only ever encountered energy weapons once, in the hands of the Khan's elite guard, but that memory would remain vivid in his mind until the day he died. He looked down at again, and noticed his foot in another of the ash piles that covered the floor. A shiver went through him. "These aren't ashes. They're corpses."

His men turned and stared. He stepped aside and scraped the bottom of his boot clean across the floor.

"What in the fuck is going on?" Stoker said.

"Major," Knowles said.

Knowles had found a trail of smeared blood across the cold cement floor. It led through a door and down a dark and narrow passage. Knowles lit the flashlight on her riot gun and shined it through. The trail led on and to a flight of stairs leading down into some basement level of the refinery. She looked at Samuel.

Samuel nodded. "Yeah, all right." He pressed a button on his helmet. "Artillery and Recon, the refinery appears to be clear, but we've found a passage underground. Move in and secure the area topside. We're going to check it out."

"Roger, Major. We're Oscar Mike."

Samuel attached a flashlight to his carbine's bayonet mount and activated another flashlight mounted to the side of his helmet while his team followed suit. He shouldered his carbine and gave Knowles a nod. Knowles went through. Samuel waved in Jansen ahead of himself and then went in after them, the rest of his team coming in behind. They attached their flashlights to their bayonet mounts and activated the ones affixed to their helmets. They walked through maintenance tunnels lined with electric wiring and plumbing long out of use. The tunnels branched into multiple directions, but the blood trail led them along a direct path.

Knowles shined a light down a bisecting hallway, and then down another. "How do you want to handle this, Major?"

Before he could answer, Samuel got a crackle of static over his headset. He could hardly make out a voice through it. "_Samuel…your team…out_."

Samuel tapped the side of the headset. "Say again? Over."

He got another burst of static and couldn't make a bit of sense out of it.

"We may be getting poor reception underground, Major," Johnston said.

Samuel took a few large sets back toward the stairs to the top. "This is Major Greene. Please say again. Over."

"_Samuel, get your team out of there. Wherever they are._"

Samuel didn't recognize the voice. "Who am I speaking to?"

"_An old friend. Dutch. I'll explain when I meet you outside the refinery._"

Samuel's jaw dropped. "You got to be shitting me."

Samuel turned just in time to see the hulking black shape materialize out of the darkness, like a living shadow. Knowles tried to bring around her shotgun, but was swept aside and sent flying and crashing into the wall. It enveloped Jansen, and dragged him with a whoosh of air back into the darkness from which it had appeared. And then the screaming started.

Jansen's shrieks rang out over Samuel's headset, and they were all he could hear even as he dashed down the tunnel in pursuit of Jansen and the thing that had taken him, even as he bellowed orders at his men to follow. Knowles was on her feet and running alongside him. He barely had time to register the sight of the three bleeding claw marks across her chest that had cut straight through her combat armor before she had passed him. When Johnston finally hit the switch to deactivate Jansen's mike, Samuel could still hardly separate the different voices chattering over his radio.

"…the fucking hell was that…"

"…Jansen! Jansen!…"

"…this way. It went this…"

"…on a motorcycle, sped right by…"

They chased the beast and Jansen down different corridors, but they ultimately led them back to the blood trail, and finally to a large underground chamber with heavy steel pipes and boilers and furnaces, and a hundred places for an invisible horror to ambush them from.

"Everyone shut the fuck up," Samuel said. "Fucking focus. It's in here somewhere."

"It was a goddamn deathclaw," Danziger said. "I don't believe…"

"I said shut up," Samuel said. "Knowles, you're bleeding."

"It's not deep."

"Johnston, can you pinpoint Jansen?"

"He's up ahead, moving. He's not screaming anymore. Jansen? Jansen?" He shook his head and then pointed a finger. "He's still now."

Samuel took point away from Knowles. He moved forward through the subbasement with his rifle shouldered, swinging his beam of light, knowing that any patch of darkness could hide a literal monster. Thoughts swam in his mind. Missing raiders. Mysterious invaders. A mythical creature. What the fuck did it mean?

He followed the trail of blood. It grew fainter and fainter and then, just before fading away entirely, it was suddenly everywhere and on everything. Blood splattered the floor and the machinery and everything in between thickly and violently. The air grew thick with that familiar rusty copper smell. Then he turned a corner, and he found the bones.

Stacks of human bones, arranged neatly into piles. Rib cages and spines and skulls and femurs stripped down to their pearl white surfaces. Tatters of bloody clothing. And large brown eggs the size of basketballs, all arranged in a cluster in the middle of the floor. Jansen was also there, laying in a pool of blood. Samuel and his men swung their flashlights all across the scene. The deathclaw was nowhere to be seen.

"Jansen," Samuel whispered. He received no answer. He took a step toward forward.

Knowles cried out a warning. "_Major, get down!_"

Samuel never saw where the damned thing came from. He leapt aside just in time, and its huge claws raked the wall behind him carving three long gashes out of solid concrete. Thunder shook the room—Knowles filled the air with lead, pouring almost a full pound of buckshot out of her shotgun on full-auto. The pellets tore into the beast, lifting off a shower of blood and shreds of scaly hide. The deathclaw let out an agonized roar and leapt high over their heads and caught a steel beam and then leapt from it back to the floor behind them. Danziger followed it all along the way, squirting a line of tracers at it that burned scarlet red lines out of the air and brought down a shower of sparks from the ceiling and chewed up the deathclaw's hide. Stoker fired a dragon's breath round out of his grenade launcher—a chemical shell that essentially turned the weapon into a temporary flamethrower. A white hot plume of burning phosphorus engulfed the beast and set its shredded hide on fire. It let out a horrified scream and fled back the way they'd come.

Samuel rose. A second deathclaw emerged from the darkness and leapt into the middle of them before anyone had a chance to react. It swung one huge arm and swept aside Danziger and Stoker. Johnston emptied his 9mm grease gun into its back, but he may as well have tried kicking it. It turned and closed its jaws around his throat. Samuel fired his 12.7 carbine, aiming for the head. A single round from his big 12.7 blew off one of its horns, peeled off its cheek, and popped one of its huge yellow eyes right out of its socket.

There was a horrible tearing sound, and the deathclaw swung around to face him with Johnston's spinal cord swinging from between its teeth. Samuel fired a full-auto burst into its chest, blowing fist-sized chunks of scaly flesh out of its hide. It lunged forward at him. Crocket fired his sniper rifle at close range into its back, throwing it off balance. The claw it swung at Samuel missed him by inches but knocked the carbine out of his hands. He stumbled backward, slipped on a pile of bones, and fell on his back. He reached for his sidearm. The deathclaw leapt forward and landed over him, one foot landing on the center of his chest and driving all of the air from his lungs. Its hind claws sank into and through his chestplate, clawing into his flesh underneath. It raised its huge arms to bring them both down on him and impale him to the floor. Samuel jammed the muzzle of his grenade launcher up against the beast's skin and triggered off a 40mm contact shot into its groin.

The launcher was loaded with a beehive shell, and all of its explosive gasses and its massive flechette payload were injected directly under the monster's hide. There was no boom, no flash, and no cloud of smoke. The sides of the monster bulged hideously and Samuel could suddenly see the barbed ends of all the tiny black darts sticking out from beneath its skin like the spines of a cactus. A geyser of blood sprayed out of its mouth. Samuel rolled out of the way just before it crashed down on top of him. He grabbed his carbine off the floor and put the muzzle against the back of the monster's skull and blew its other eye out.

Samuel stumbled and slipped in blood and fell and rose again, trying to suck air into his deflated lungs. Danziger was up again. Stoker was still down but moving. The sight of Johnston almost made him vomit inside his helmet. He tore it off and wretched and wheezed. He dropped his empty mag and plugged in another. Knowles loaded her shotgun with yellow-cased slugs. The blood splatter made Samuel's flashlight cast a crimson glow. The first deathclaw, scorched black, came charging back up out of the darkness. Samuel fired his carbine again and again, Knowles' shotgun and Danziger's LMG booming beside him. The bullets tore the deathclaw to shreds that barely clung together even as it closed the distance in one all-out berserker charge. Just as it was about to reach them, a final thunderous boom rang out and the deathclaw simply exploded into a fine pink mist and a shower of fleshy chunks that rained down all over Samuel and his men.

Samuel wiped the blood out of his eyes, and when he looked again, that scary motherfucker, that ghost from his past, was standing there at the end of the room with the biggest damned rifle Samuel had ever seen against his shoulder. Dutch slowly lowered the smoking muzzle to the floor. Knowles and Danziger stepped forward, their weapons raised, screaming orders at Dutch to put down the weapon and get down on the floor.

"Stand down," Samuel yelled. "He's friendly."

They lowered their weapons and glanced back at him. Samuel stepped forward.

"Right?" he said.

"Depends who you ask," Dutch said.

"Are there more? Of these things?"

"Shouldn't be. They can typically only transport two at a time."

Samuel grabbed Dutch by the collar of his jacket and shoved him backward against the steel boiler behind him. "You are about to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on."

"When I figure it out, you'll be the first to know," Dutch said. That damned metal plate he had for a face. Samuel couldn't read a thing off of it.

A voice behind him broke the silence. "What…happened?"

Jansen's voice. Samuel let go of Dutch and ran to him. Cranston knelt beside him on the floor. He'd taken Jansen's helmet up and had propped it under his head as a cushion. Jansen moaned while Cranston injected him with stims and morphine. He bled from multiple lacerations all over his body. One arm and one leg were clearly broken.

"How is he?" Samuel said.

"He took a beating," Cranston said. "We need to get him out of here."

Samuel looked at what was left of Johnston's body, lying off to the side. He sighed and reached for the receiver to the manpack radio on his back. It was slick with blood.

"Scout Recon," he said.

"Jesus Christ, Major. What is going on down there? Some guy on a motorcycle just blew past us."

"He's a friend. There were deathclaws down below. I have casualties. Send medics with stretchers."

"Mother of god. Roger that."

Samuel replaced the receiver on Johnston's body, trying not to look at it.

"Help me," a voice said. Faint and weak.

"They're on their way, Jansen."

"That wasn't Jansen," Cranston said.

Samuel shot to his feet, his carbine in hand. Dutch appeared next to him, a black submachine-gun in his hands. He pointed to a pile of bones. They went over and kicked a few aside and found the filthy, battered body of a raider laying facedown underneath. He didn't have any legs.

"Help me," he said again.

Samuel reached down, Dutch stopped him. He pointed to a deep black gash across the back of the man's upper back. "The deathclaw severed his spine. If you move him, you could kill him."

"Yes," the raider said. "Do that, then. Do anything. Just don't leave me."

Samuel kicked aside a skull and lay down next to the man, so they could meet each other eye to eye. "I'll help you, but you have to tell me what happened here first."

The man's eyes were grayed over and dry. He was dead to the world. "I don't know what happened. Monsters came. Took us one by one. Ate us one by one. I'm the last. I watched them eat them. Waiting my turn."

"We found burned bodies upstairs, burn marks on the walls."

"The other monsters. The invisible people. They put the people into a box. They weren't like the monsters who took us downstairs. We stood in a line, and they gave us our judgment. The righteous went into the box. The wicked went downstairs."

"Where did they take them? The ones in the box?"

"We went to hell. Perhaps they went to heaven."

"Did they take Kango?"

"Kango, most his soldiers, Haddox and his tribals. Some of the slaves, and even the dogs. Kango with his jaw hanging on by a thread. Haddox with his hands cut off. They chose them, and sent me down with the old men and the sick."

"These monsters. What did they look like?"

"When we could see them, they looked like people, only not like people. Faceless. Glowing eyes. Shiny…black…" His eyes rolled around, and suddenly grew wide and wild and his breathing grew fast and hoarse. His voice trembled. "There's one…behind you."

Samuel spun around, but there was no one there. No one, except Dutch.

"Curious," Dutch said.

Samuel emerged into the cold outer air with two commandoes fewer and a hundred questions more. He walked alongside Danziger and Crocket as they carried the stretcher bearing Jansen, helping them balance as they climbed the long staircase.

"These broken bones will heal, Major," Jansen said. "Don't go filling my spot on the Willy Charlie team. I'll be back for it someday soon."

"I'll promise if you promise to get better," Samuel said.

"That's a deal," Jansen said. They carried him off. Cranston went with him for a moment and then came back and pointed to the blood oozing down the front of Samuel's chest plate and then to Kango's chair nearby. Samuel took off his trench coat and armor and sat in Kango's chair and let Cranston check the holes in his chest. They ached fiercely, but they were shallow. Cranston sprayed something on them that made them sting twice as fiercely. Then he pushed against the side of his chest and Samuel nearly cried out.

"That hurt?" Cranston said.

Samuel swore. "Yeah. Fuck."

"That's your rib. You're lucky it isn't broken. Thank Christ for combat armor."

Samuel leaned to see around Cranston and to look at Knowles, who was being tended to by another medic attached to one of his Scout units. When she removed her armor, her olive drab sports bra was soaked deep red and continued to drip at her feet. He could see how deep her gashes were even from across the room.

"Christ," Samuel said. He rose before Cranston could finish and pushed him toward her. "Her first."

"Damn it, Knowles," Cranston said. "Let me see what you've done now."

She tried to remove her bra, and the pain looked like it nearly made her gag. Samuel laid his trench coat and hers on the floor and told her to lay back on them. Cranston cut through the elastic of her bra at the collar and tore it down the middle. Three lacerations, long and deep. They had penetrated the fatty layer and oozed blood. The highest one had raked her left breast and cut especially deep. She looked pale.

Samuel glared. "You said it wasn't deep."

She smiled. "It's just a scratch."

Cranston sprayed her wounds with disinfectant and started to stitch up the gashes without anesthesia. She winced and squirmed and let out a low groan. He squeezed her hand.

"We go out hunting deathclaws and find raiders," Knowles said. "We go out hunting raiders and find deathclaws."

"I'm not sure what the fuck we've found," Samuel said. He looked over at Dutch, who paced the room inspecting the ash piles and the scorched black holes they had noticed before. Dutch had played a major role in the most pivotal event of his life, and yet he remained in every way a mystery to him.

"Who is the tin man?" Knowles said.

"His name is Dutch. I couldn't tell you much more than that."

"He said he was an old friend?"

"He was an ally, once. I knew him for all of a month. The last month, in the war against the Khan."

"Was he one of the…you know?"

Samuel frowned. "The horsemen." He'd never cared for the title. A Khan loyalist, some biblical fanatic, had given it to them as a sort of propaganda. Somehow it had stuck, even among his citizens and his own troops, no matter how hard he tried to put an end to it. "I'm not supporting that stupid name they gave us, but he was Plague."

"Jesus Christ," Danziger said. Samuel looked back at him. He was leaning against the wall just inside of earshot. So were Stoker and Crocket.

"He led the infiltration mission into the Khan's nuclear reactor at the Battle of Thermopolis," Stoker said. "And then he turned the whole fucking city into a firecracker."

"Hatchett introduced us, and never said where they met. Nobody knew where he came from, or where he went after—or what happened to his fucking face, or where he got that tantalum replacement. My suspicion was that he came out of a Vault, but he never confirmed it."

"A Vault? This far north?" Cranston said.

"He said he was on a mission to get back something the Khan had taken from his home. Some kind of prewar tech. Hell, look at him. He's a walking showcase for prewar tech."

Dutch turned and clearly noticed their eyes were all on him. He walked over with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He looked down at Knowles' bare chest and his mechanical eyes whirred and clicked like strange clockwork. Samuel cleared his throat, and Dutch looked back up.

"Are you finished discussing me?" Dutch said.

Samuel stood. A few small, thin lines of blood continued to run down the front of his bare chest. "I'm trying really hard to be optimistic that you have an explanation for me for what happened here."

"I'm at something of a loss for that mys—"

"No," Samuel said. "Fuck you, asshole. Do not even dare to feed me that cryptic bullshit. I tracked a raider here. An ordinary raider and slaver with nothing special about him at all. I get here and I find a whole horde of raiders missing without a trace. Evidence of space age weapons with no origin. Mutant fucking monstrosities out of a bad horror story living in the basement. And a survivor saying guys who look just like you are behind it."

"They wouldn't have all looked like me. Maybe two or three. Replacing the eyes is a delicate and expensive procedure."

Samuel waited to hear more, and quickly lost patience. "Speak, god damn you."

"They've been seeding the region with feral deathclaws with shortened life-spans and behavior modifications that make them disinterested in self-preservation and always intent on killing and eating humans specifically. I'm not sure what their motive is for doing so, and I have absolutely no idea why they would have taken these raiders prisoner."

"And who the fuck are '_they_?' "

"The facility I come from, or one like it. Supposedly, there are seven along the US-Canadian border. They have no army, no way to support one, so they look for ways to strike out indirectly and from the shadows."

He may as well have been speaking another language for all the sense his answers made to Samuel. "Why?" was all he could think to ask next.

"They look at what you've built here, and they see the seeds, the potential beginnings, of a nation. And that alarms them very much. That is their mission. To prevent any unwanted seeds from taking root, until such time as their own can be planted. They were supposed to watch for that sort of threat north of the border—out of fear that a Canadian nation would reform if left unchecked. But now they believe that the real threat was behind them all along."

"I still don't understand who they are. Who we're talking about."

"They're the Homeland Protection Agency," Dutch said. "Of the United States of America."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Bad Day at Slickrock

**The Wild One – Memorial Day – Atomic Hot Sauce – Fireworks – Dutch Loses his Cool – The Rocket's Red Glare**

Driving an electric motorcycle through the wasteland gave an eerie, almost ethereal experience. With barely a high pitched whine from the motor even at the highest speed, the overwhelming sound was the rush of wind breaking across Dutch's metal plated face, the occasional clatter of his suspension over the cracks in the ancient asphalt. For a man who had spent the last ten years of his life walking at a tortoise pace across the wastes, traveling at high speed on wheels seemed as alien as flying.

He entered a long, narrow canyon between mountains where the road seemed as straight and as flat as a landing strip, and where the asphalt had been preserved from the elements so that it might have been freshly paved. He slowed to a stop and he took a swig of water through the tube fixed to his collar. He dialed _Rebel Rouser_ into his PIPBoy and the deep, twangy sound of an electric guitar paired with the swinging blare of a saxophone—prewar rock and roll—entered his ears. He adjusted the knob on the side of motorcycle from normal gear to racing mode. He smiled and gunned his engine.

He went from zero to sixty in all of two seconds and rose to ninety in less than two more. His heart thudded and the music roared and he smiled wider than he could ever remember.

He returned to Slickrock the next morning and cruised slowly down a central street decorated with festive banners and filled with booths and tents and tables covered with bright tablecloths and pitchers of beer and iced tea and steaming hot pies and meats and fruit salads. Music was being played on every street corner and he had to navigate crowds of dancing and laughing people who walked from booth to booth sampling free foodstuffs. Eventually he reached the town's hotel and found Hatchett sitting sentry-like on the porch. Dutch parked the motorcycle and went over to him.

"You're back," Hatchett said. He had a half of a lemon meringue pie on a table next to his chair and a slice of it on a plate in his hand. His bulging waistline explained where the other half of the pie had gone. "I'm glad."

"What's going on?" Dutch said.

"Festival," Hatchett said.

"What's the occasion?"

"The Khan is still dead. And it's the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Thermopolis."

A bullet to the head had clouded Dutch's memories of that day. He remembered a lot of pain, a lot of screaming, a great many lives lost, and a city vanishing in a flash of nuclear fire. "People celebrate that?"

Hatchett shrugged. "The ones who weren't there think it's worth remembering. I'll go along with it as long as the food is always this good. 'Veterans' of the battle eat free, by the way. That includes you." He cut another piece of the pie off and put it on a plate and handed it to Dutch. "Maybe you'll glue more than a half pound of weight to those sticks before you go running off again this time."

Dutch took a bite of the pie and looked around. "Any more…?"

Hatchett frowned. "No. It's been quiet."

"Where's my prisoner?"

"Out there somewhere," Hatchett said. "Partaking."

"Seriously?"

Hatchett smiled. "She was this year's only winner in the Atomic Hot Legs competition. She was the only one who could finish a plate of fried gecko legs coated in Elita's hot sauce recipe. Girl's got a tolerance for punishment. If I even smelled one of them things, I'd be up all night feeling like I been gutshot."

"I'll be damned," Dutch said.

Hatchett stood. "Come on. Let's lock that gear up at the station."

Hatchett helped Dutch push the motorcycle along toward the sheriff's station. Each time they passed a booth, Hatchett would stop and hold the bike and refuse to proceed until Dutch had sampled more the local cuisine. By the time they reached the station, he'd eaten three large Brahmin ribs, an eight-inch broiled sausage, a chop of breaded bighorner mutton in mint sauce, three slices of pie, a plate of beans and coleslaw, and a bowl of banana pudding. Hatchett handed him a mug of beer the size of a flagon, and they came upon a wooden dance floor erected in center of town.

Couples danced swinging and spinning on the floor to a screeching fiddler and a country bluegrass band. Dutch recognized Hatchett's deputy well before he recognized the girl he danced with. She wore floral cowboy boots and a light blue skirt and a fringed buckskin jacket. She danced with as much enthusiasm as anyone on the floor. Marion struggled to keep up.

"This," Dutch said, "I did not foresee."

"She warmed to us faster than we warmed to her," Hatchett said. "But with all the things she's done for us the last few weeks, she's become a bit of a local favorite."

"What things?"

"Well Doc McCabe originally took her on as an assistant, but now it seems like, between the two of us, it's more like he's the one assisting her. She's four different kinds of doctors rolled into one. You know that?"

"She was made for medicine," Dutch said. "The way I was made to kill."

Hatchett glanced at him strangely. They passed the dance floor and reached the station. Dutch leaned the motorcycle against the porch and secured it with a chain and padlock. He lifted his bags off the back seat and carried them inside and Hatchett unlocked the iron bars around the armory. Dutch unloaded his gear into a footlocker marked with his name. He hung up his big .50 on the rack and started to turn away. Hatchett shook his head. Dutch unhooked the SMG from its nylon harness and set it down before stepping out.

Hatchett lit a cigar and watched the people dancing through a window. "She saved that boy they brought in, you know. McCabe never would have been able to. That's not all, either. Burt, one of my deputies, used to be the grumpiest old bear in town, and now he's the happiest, since she fixed a knee that's been causing him misery for fifteen years. She fixed a little girl who couldn't walk to where she will soon. I'm talking about stuff the best doctors in California wouldn't know how to do."

Dutch nodded. "That's not the half of what she knows."

"You mean she knows how to put a computer in a person's head."

Dutch went to the window and looked out at the dance floor and his prisoner, dancing. "Or replace his eyes with mechanical ones."

"Was gonna tiptoe around that one."

"Don't bother." Dutch's eyes ticked and hummed as they zoomed in like telescopes to view the girl's face. He noticed the placement of her hands on the young deputy's lower back. "She's getting very close to your deputy, I see."

Hatchett was silent for a moment. "Yeah, uh…whatever woke up in her being off that spiked water woke up something else too, I reckon."

Dutch looked at him. "Did you…?"

Hatchett scowled. "No, damn it." He tugged at his collar. "She tried it, one night. I'm too old to get into that kind of trouble. I guess she's latched onto Marion now. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing for either of them, but lord knows it's better than that."

Dutch sipped his beer. "I did not foresee this at all."

"I'll tell you one thing," Hatchett said. "As far as folks around here are concerned, she's one of us now."

Dutch sipped his beer. "And when they find out her involvement?"

"Why should they?"

"You don't think they should?"

"People around here have all made their own mistakes. Lord knows I have. You have. McCabe was one of the Khan's doctors—and I'll thank you not to spread that around. Let's not go hurting anyone's feelings if we can help it." Hatchett went to his desk and sat down. "So? You find the Major?"

Dutch continued to watch out the window. "Yes. I invited him here. I hope you approve."

"Did he?"

Dutch shook his head. "He gave me no clear answer on whether he'd accept it. But it was as I suspected. He's as embroiled as we are, and as hungry for answers."

"How much did you fill him in on?"

"What I could. But he had found something that I had no answers for. That opened a whole new chapter of questions."

"Don't tell me that."

"Are you familiar with…Kango?"

Hatchett raised an eyebrow. "By association. He pointed at the cell. Them two in there are his boys. The blind and deaf one is his cousin. Why?"

Dutch shook his head. "I don't know why. He and all of his men are missing."

"Missing?"

"They vanished into the night. I think my old associates took him. They left no bodies."

Hatchett scratched his head under his hat. "The hell…?"

"Indeed."

As night fell over the town, the festivities picked up rather than slowed down, and kegs of beer and ale and bottles of wasteland corn whiskey and agave tequila were uncorked and the townspeople danced drunkenly in high spirits in the streets by moonlight. Fireworks were launched into the sky and exploded in flares of red and yellow and blue and cracked like the gunfire of the battle they commemorated.

Hatchett and Dutch and Marion and Doc McCabe sat at a round table. Dutch sat beside a new friend—a tribal with braided hair and a gecko-skin vest who introduced himself as Rhiago and wore a machete like a sword. On a narrow stage a leathery-skinned ghoul with no eyes—just empty sockets—played slide guitar and a wailing harmonica. The ghoul, Blind Willie, regaled them with songs about times long passed and guzzled from a glowing bottle of irradiated spirits. The Geiger counter in Dutch's PIPboy ticked softly in his presence

Emmy came back to the table with six shots of tequila on a plate and passed them around. Hatchett declined, so the girl drank his in addition to her own.

"The night is young yet," Marion said. "You think you might want to slow down, lady?"

"Come on," she said, her voice slurring. "It's a festival!"

"For someone who says she never met John Barleycorn, you're sure not shy about getting acquainted in a hurry."

She's been addicted to stronger stuff her whole life, Dutch thought. Inebriation was something close to her natural state, only more fun. She'd likely become an alcoholic. He decided not to share his prognosis for the time being.

"I remember the day my tribe learned of the firewater," Rhiago said. "Rhiago fathered two children that day. Noble warriors both. Such shame they look so much like Rhiago. He have to leave tribe when chief realize it."

"Oh, I'm sure we've all been there," the Doc said, rubbing his eyes. He looked around. "Oh. Just me?"

Hatchett's eyes had been on the bar, or more specifically the bartender Elita, for much of the night. She wore a tight checked flannel shirt and cut off jeans and dazzling white boots. He finished his beer and finally got up to go talk to her when he saw an opening.

"So is that…" Emmy said. She gazed at the bluesman on stage. "Is that one of the mutants?"

"But they all are," Dutch said.

"I suppose you could say he has a _mutation_ or two," Marion said. "But we can't go holding that against him."

"The ghouls be sacred things," Rhiago said. "They be the holy spirits made flesh for my people. Smelly, droopy flesh."

McCabe burped. "And who is to fault them for a mutation. Is it not mutation that gave the world so long ago the soupy plankton that sprouted legs and crawled onto the beach and sprouted hands which sprouted thumbs which built the beautiful bomb that reduced the world that gave him life to a scorched cinder in thanks…?"

"What do you think should be done with that mutant on stage?" Dutch said. "Emmy."

She looked at him. "I guess…someone could buy him a drink? He's pretty good."

"Don't you think he should be incinerated, before whatever he has spreads to us?"

Emmy frowned. Marion scratched his chin. "Killing the mood a little there, aren't you Dutchman?"

"Don't you think Marion should be too? The mutant whose lap you're sitting in?"

"Hey," Marion said. "She's just on the corner of the same chair…"

"I think he's drunk," Emmy said.

"I think you're a fucking faker," Dutch said. "I think you should still be in a god damned cage."

"Hey," Marion said.

"I…I know I was wrong now," she said. "I'm trying to learn."

"Prove it, bitch," Dutch said.

"Hey now," Marion said. "You check that sh—"

Dutch overturned the table. Drinks spilled. Glasses shattered. Chairs clattered backward to the floor. Marion rose and got in Dutch's way and got shoved to the floor. Dutch seized "Emmy" around the neck and carried her to the wall and shoved her against it. The Doc and the tribal grabbed his arms, trying to tear him off her. Her eyes bulged.

"People disappearing at night. Children, sick, and elderly leave only bones. Deathclaw chow. Able bodied men and women leave nothing. They're being taken alive. Where? Why? What is the purpose? I know you know why, you brilliant fucking doctor. If you have seen the light, then reflect some of it, or stop pretending, and go back in your cage."

Marion added a pair of arms around the neck trying to pull him off. The music had stopped. She squeaked. He relaxed his grip to let her speak. "I don't know anyth—"

He slammed her into the wall. A framed picture fell to the floor and shattered.

"You know exactly _two_ clearance levels more than I do. That means you know something. So share it. Why would they abduct raiders? Why take a man without a jaw, and leave an anemic man to bleed?"

"They can replace a jaw," she said. He loosened his grip. "They can…they…" Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she went into a violent spasm and collapsed onto the floor.

The three men finally managed to pull Dutch back and they all stumbled and all four men fell crashing to the floor. When Dutch untangled himself from the three men, Hatchett and McCabe were over Emmy, who thrashed violently on the floor, vomiting pie and tequila. Hatchett forced a wooden spoon into her mouth so she didn't bite through her tongue.

"What in the hell did you do?" Marion yelled, grabbing his collar.

"I didn't…"

"She's having a seizure," McCabe said. "She's epileptic?"

"No," Dutch said. "Impossible."

"Then what?" Hatchett said.

"She was trying. I think she was trying to tell me. Something stopped her."

"God damn it at all," Hatchett said. "I am so fucking tired of this bullshi—"

"Help me get her to my office so I can give her something to calm her down," McCabe said.

Hatchett and McCabe lifted the girl up and went for the door. The men and women at their tables sat staring in silence. Dutch started after them. Marion grabbed him and swung him around. "You got a real nice way about you, tin man. You know that?"

Marion shoved past him. Dutch scratched his head and looked at his PIPboy. His blood alcohol content registered 0.08. He took a moment to collect himself and then followed them outside. They were halfway down the street. He jogged to catch up. A man in a duster and cowboy hat with a rifle yelled down at them from the parapets of the high wall that surrounded the city. "Oh my god Sheriff. What's wrong with that pretty lady doctor. She okay?"

"I'm sure she's fine, Burt. You just stay about your business."

"I can come down."

"You just keep your eyes over the wall. You're the only one watching that sector."

"Hell, Sheriff, there ain't nothing—"

Burt, and a tremendous portion of the wall beneath him, vanished in a ball of orange flame. The shockwave knocked the crowds of people off their feet. Chunks of brick and concrete rained down with bits of Burt. A fist-sized chunk of rock rebounded off Dutch's metal face and it rang like a gong, knocking him senseless. He woke up surrounded by injured and screaming people and chunks of debris. He rose.

A man approached him through the dust and the smoke. A pair of eyes glowed yellow in out of the otherwise formless outline. A civilian pushed past Dutch, moving toward a crying child. Dutch put out a hand to try to stop him. A light flashed florescent blue, and the man disappeared in a pillar of blue flame—a blackened skeleton with hands outstretched briefly visible through the flames before they crumbled into a pile of ash. The light of the flames cleared away the shadows, and Dutch beheld a man dressed in a raider's spray-painted steel armor and wearing a necklace of human ears, and yet he had Dutch's own face—his own metal face and glowing mechanical eyes. He grinned wide, revealing missing and blackened teeth, and leveled a phased plasma bolt rifle in Dutch's direction.

"Ha ha ha," he said. His voice was just like Dutch's.

Dutch's raised his 10mm pistol and shot the abomination between his mechanical eyes. The metal plating there pinged and the raider's head snapped back and forth and swayed for a moment and he took a dizzy step forward. Dutch slugged him across the jaw and spun him around and held him around the throat and wrapped his hand around his, refusing to let the raider release his hold around the trigger of the plasma gun and firing form him. He fired it through the gaping hole in the breeched wall, firing bolts of arcing blue fire through the smoky haze at the hordes of shadowy figures pouring through it. He struck one, and then another, lighting them up. Their bodies continued to run forward, fully engulfed in blue flame, before finally crumbling into ash.

The abomination in his arms struggled against him. He touched the plasma gun's trigger once with his own index finger before the thing fought free of him, and that was all it took. He kicked the thing hard in the back and it stumbled forward, his weapon emitting strings of warning chirps and beeps. The thing spun around and aimed the rifle, and suddenly the weapon exploded in his hands, sending up a geyser of blue flame that left only a glowing hot metal faceplate on top of a pile of smoking ashes in his place.

Gunfire chattered out. People screamed, and everywhere fell flailing and bloody, gunned down in the streets. Dutch picked a target out of the smoke and the crowd and snapped off six shots into him as he walked forward—blood and dust and electrical sparks spraying where the slugs thumped his body until he finally teetered over backward and fell into a water trough and sizzled out. They were raiders, but they had bionics like his own. No training, but all of his own kind's technology. It made no sense at all.

He fired four more shots at targets moving around him. He drew a bead on another and fired two shots, and one thumped a bit of hair off the back of a raider's skull and dropped him. His slide locked back. He dropped his empty mag and reached for another. A grenade landed beside him. His integrated sensors beeped a warning into his ears. He dove. The grenade exploded and lifted him into the air. His body slammed into the side of a lamp post and fell to the street. He rose, groaning, and reached again for another mag, but when he looked up, three of the robo-raiders stood around him. One had a single mechanical eye crudely welded into his left eye socket, nearly obscuring an ancient scar. Another looked normal, but rather than holding a gun his hand _was_ a gun. One had legs that resembled metal goat's legs. And yet they all wore the decorations and colors of one of Kango's raiders.

"You maniacs," Dutch said. "You fucking lunatics."

"Now you die," the one with the robot legs said.

Then all three of their heads exploded clean off their shoulders—and Dutch caught brief glimpses of tangled wires and sparking computer relays amid the chunks of gray matter and bone fragments that filled the air.

The three bodies thudded to the ground, blood pooling. Sheriff Hatchett stepped out of the smoke and the dust with a revolver in either hand. He holstered one and reached down to help Dutch to his feet.

"Get up," he said. "You can rest after you help me clean this trash out of my town."


End file.
